DOLPHIN KEY

Land abandons his usual thriller format (The Pillars of Solomon, p. 169, etc.) to instruct and entertain us with a medical suspense tale about the healing powers of dolphins. These aquatic mammals in the Florida Keys are part of a research program in Dolphin Human Therapy. Naturally friendly toward man, they enjoy helping disabled and autistic children gain faith in themselves and grow by interacting with them. The children’some legless, armless, or both; others walled in by autistic mutism—break out of their spiritual cocoons by feeding and playing with the dolphins. (Land bases his story on a real-life program.) The dolphins, theoretically, may help humans recover from illnesses by echolocation, sending sounds into the molecules of sick people, who can feel the vibrations right in their bones, and by rebuilding these molecules without the illness. Land also depicts members of an environmentalist group, cast as the villains who want captive dolphins returned to the wild. They take the research program to court; the climax finds the child-loving dolphins themselves acting as witnesses at the hearing. Only the meanest critic could carp at such well-intentioned storytelling, although environmentalists as the heavies seems a little mean-spirited itself.