An exhilarating, confident novel involving hardy heroes and nefarious bioscience.
A father fights for his missing daughter in this debut biotech thriller.
Saenger parlays his expertise as a pharmaceutical immuno-oncologist in this novel about widowed single father and former SWAT team leader Max Tyler, who becomes embroiled in a nefarious biomedical scheme. While camping in California, his 9-year-old daughter, Megan, is nearly abducted by an unknown assailant; she’s shot with a tranquilizer dart and becomes gravely ill. Infectious disease specialist Beth Collins, at a nearby hospital, enters the picture to care for Megan. Another clumsy attempt to kidnap the girl occurs as Max struggles with Larry Drake, a disgruntled, drug-addled nurse who’s been committing murders at the hospital. Megan is abducted, along with Beth, who’d tried in vain to rescue her. Max holds the remaining kidnapper at gunpoint, and he confesses that Megan was taken to a secret lab. As Max and special ops expert Mark Hunter frantically plot a mission to save the day, Saenger expands his riveting narrative by offering further details about biotechnology company Viralvector and its diabolical “projects” involving Megan, whom they’d initially targeted long ago. Its chief scientist has collected several kids for viral experiments that allow the company to hijack certain youngsters’ brain cells, spur their intellectual advancement, and create prime candidates for stem cell harvesting. The author describes this process and many medical procedures with the ease of a seasoned clinical scientist. Some readers may find his expert explanations of genetic manipulation to be overly complicated, but they do add more intrigue and mystery to the story. Megan, who later teams up with another kidnapped girl, emerges as a tenacious character with plenty of youthful determination. In the end, Saenger’s villains aren’t nearly as wicked and calculating as readers may want them to be. However, the author’s gripping storytelling and characterization—and particularly his riveting conclusion—more than make up for this.
An exhilarating, confident novel involving hardy heroes and nefarious bioscience.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-946920-82-9
Page Count: 306
Publisher: TouchPoint Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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