Sluggish in parts, this medical thriller nevertheless delivers an informative and surprising adventure.
A debut novel examines the repercussions of an experimental LSD therapy.
For patients in the late stages of cancer, the Wohler Psychiatric Institute in Las Vegas provides a final hope. In addition to the standard services of a hospice, the institute engages in an experimental therapy. Exploring the potential for lysergic acid diethylamide (known as LSD) to be used in psychotherapy, the facility seeks to “furnish relief to a dying individual’s final days.” While some patients react well to the therapy, others wind up with less encouraging results. Supplying the LSD to Wohler is the job of Swiss Dr. Jonas Krummen. Holding the title of “Chemistry Professor Emeritus” at a nearby university, Krummen, with the help of graduate student Garrett Wayley, synthesizes the psychoactive drug in highly controlled conditions. Responding to patients who react poorly to the therapy, Krummen proposes creating an analogue of the standard LSD-25, to be known as LSD-3Z. After Garrett finds out he has an inoperable brain tumor, he eventually receives the LSD-3Z at Wohler. Shockingly, the LSD-3Z provides more than relief; it manages to diminish his tumor. Side effects, however, are soon apparent. As Garrett’s personality changes and voices emerge in his head, the reader is told that “a dark analogue of Garrett Wayley had emerged.” Part sci-fi, part cop story (a detective named Nick Farris, who winds up pursuing Garrett, also receives the LSD-3Z at Wohler), Rohrer’s tale takes a number of twists and turns. At its best, when providing technical details, such as explaining the process for creating d-lysergic acid hydrate (“The compound is synthesized from the precursor ergotamine tartrate”), the novel weaves information neatly into the text. Somewhat less thrilling are stock characters like Nick, who is described as a “lean ex-Marine,” and Krummen, who was once a “brilliant doctoral graduate.” Slow in portions (for example, the largely unnecessary portrayal of one of Nick’s police assignments, where a clichéd lieutenant explains that the suspects are “supposedly moving smack, meth, coke and shitloads of marijuana”), the pace increases once the analogue of Garrett emerges. Though his change in personality is sudden, it creates an urgent sense of suspense, leaving a reader to wonder where it will all lead.
Sluggish in parts, this medical thriller nevertheless delivers an informative and surprising adventure.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Finest City Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.
A promise to his best friend leads an Army serviceman to a family in need and a chance at true love in this novel.
Beckett Gentry is surprised when his Army buddy Ryan MacKenzie gives him a letter from Ryan’s sister, Ella. Abandoned by his mother, Beckett grew up in a series of foster homes. He is wary of attachments until he reads Ella’s letter. A single mother, Ella lives with her twins, Maisie and Colt, at Solitude, the resort she operates in Telluride, Colorado. They begin a correspondence, although Beckett can only identify himself by his call sign, Chaos. After Ryan’s death during a mission, Beckett travels to Telluride as his friend had requested. He bonds with the twins while falling deeply in love with Ella. Reluctant to reveal details of Ryan’s death and risk causing her pain, Beckett declines to disclose to Ella that he is Chaos. Maisie needs treatment for neuroblastoma, and Beckett formally adopts the twins as a sign of his commitment to support Ella and her children. He and Ella pursue a romance, but when an insurance investigator questions the adoption, Beckett is faced with revealing the truth about the letters and Ryan’s death, risking losing the family he loves. Yarros’ (Wilder, 2016, etc.) novel is a deeply felt and emotionally nuanced contemporary romance bolstered by well-drawn characters and strong, confident storytelling. Beckett and Ella are sympathetic protagonists whose past experiences leave them cautious when it comes to love. Beckett never knew the security of a stable home life. Ella impulsively married her high school boyfriend, but the marriage ended when he discovered she was pregnant. The author is especially adept at developing the characters through subtle but significant details, like Beckett’s aversion to swearing. Beckett and Ella’s romance unfolds slowly in chapters that alternate between their first-person viewpoints. The letters they exchanged are pivotal to their connection, and almost every chapter opens with one. Yarros’ writing is crisp and sharp, with passages that are poetic without being florid. For example, in a letter to Beckett, Ella writes of motherhood: “But I’m not the center of their universe. I’m more like their gravity.” While the love story is the book’s focus, the subplot involving Maisie’s illness is equally well-developed, and the link between Beckett and the twins is heartfelt and sincere.
A thoughtful and pensive tale with intelligent characters and a satisfying romance.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64063-533-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Entangled: Amara
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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