A frightening, if flawed, tale about two mysterious plagues.
An employee works to save the world from a health crisis caused by his company in this debut eco-thriller.
In the near future, the world is beset by two strange and terrible plagues. The first, Idiopathic Infertility Syndrome, kills fetuses in the womb. The second, Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome, causes organ failure in otherwise healthy people. Veregro, a massive company that manufactures seeds and insect repellent, has offered a million-dollar reward to anyone who can discover the cause of these scourges, and someone does: a Veregro tech named Randy Hall. But the company probably won’t like what he finds, as the cause is Veregro itself. Randy takes his findings to Veregro’s vice president for communications, Walter Conroy, a former researcher whose work predicted these epidemics 18 years ago. Walter, who recently lost his wife to MODS, begins to look into the matter, only to find out soon after that Randy has been murdered. Walter seeks out Charlotte “Lottie” Winters, a former Veregro lawyer with a checkered past who lives on a Marin County commune where MODS has not yet appeared. Walter and Lottie will have to race to stop Veregro before its products lead to the death of millions—and before the company deals with them in the same manner as Randy. Roy Mankovitz and Alan Mankovitz (a father and son team) tell their story in breezy but urgent prose: “Walter returned, sat down and poured himself some tea. The way Lottie was frowning at him suggested he wouldn’t be staying long. But how could she be angry at him? They were both after the same thing, weren’t they?” The characters are generally believable, as is the book’s terrifying premise, and the authors maintain an admirably brisk pace. This verisimilitude—in terms of the setup, if not the full narrative—makes for a thriller that is pleasantly anxiety-inducing, even as it travels along a fairly predictable track. Readers will turn the pages with their stomachs in knots, hoping that some biological solution can be found, even if it is preceded by some rather silly plot developments.
A frightening, if flawed, tale about two mysterious plagues.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9990994-9-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Weeping Willow Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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