A smart, tightly written, scary science thriller.
Rogers’ (Petroplague, 2013) characters must escape the dangers of deadly disease, dangerous wildlife and vicious criminals in this tense medical thriller.
Tessa Price is a brilliant doctor, but an intense phobia of needles and the loss of her infant son to genetic disease have left her with more than enough reason to keep her distance from patients and colleagues. But even if her work is mostly behind the microscope, she desperately wants to help people. When one of her colleagues falls ill just as an experimental gene therapy starts showing results, she rushes to the front lines. The patient, a boy named Gunnar, is showing remarkable improvement in an experimental clinic in Mexico, but while the Palacio clinic avoids American law that would delay Price’s experiments, it comes with its own share of problems. The clinic’s proprietor, Dr. Manuel Vargas, relies on local cartels for medical narcotics. He agrees to treat a kingpin and ends up plunging the Palacio into a drug war. If there’s any real weakness here, it’s Vargas himself. The use of multiple perspectives gives the novel flexibility, but Vargas’ boundless self-interest is so deplorable that he quickly become tiresome. Meanwhile, Price finds herself trapped, hiding from the gangsters along with Gunnar, his mother, a friend and a few other unfortunate—but highly capable—Palacio clients. Matters only get worse as a mysterious illness takes hold of lab animals and people alike, leading them to violence and death. Price wrestles with her deepest dreams and fears, eventually discovering that there may be a connection between her gene therapy and the contagion—a connection that could save or condemn them all. Overall, the novel is an enjoyable ride, remaining tense and exciting without feeling overly dark or oppressive. And while the science is a consistent presence, it’s easy to understand, enriching the story. A rabies plotline unfolds with enough nuance to avoid major pitfalls. And if some sections drag, the payoff is well worth the wait.
A smart, tightly written, scary science thriller.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-940419-01-5
Page Count: 292
Publisher: ScienceThrillers Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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