This sequel is just what the doctor ordered and gives the budding franchise a shot of adrenaline.
A hospital’s controversial program puts a physician and his family in harm’s way.
It is a groan-worthy pun to say that Edwards’ (Final Mercy, 2013) Dr. Jack Forester sequel starts off with a bang. But the blast that rocks the New Canterbury Medical Center wounds 31, takes the life of Forester’s “teacher, mentor, friend, advisor, ally,” and sets in motion this thriller. At issue is something called the Gilchrist Tube Project. It is the hospital’s top priority, but the dead Dr. James Gavin had reservations about it. So does a biochemist, who shares these opinions with Forester at Gavin’s memorial service. “If something were to happen to me,” he confides, “I would want someone like you to know.” Not long after, the man is reported missing. It just so happens that he was the lover of the wife of the hospital’s new dean. She asks her friend Zellie, the former investigative reporter now married to Forester, to look into the matter (“You know how to dig into things”). Zellie finds that bad things happen to those who oppose the program and want to reveal its secrets. What is the Gilchrist Tube Project? Originally, it was “designed to return a woman’s fertility when her fallopian tubes are damaged.” To reveal how it will truly be used would be a spoiler, but what is a thriller without a “hidden agenda”? Meanwhile, the bomber, a drug-addicted war veteran, is in thrall to a shadowy organization that is determined to stop the implementation of the project at all costs. When, following the initial bombing, the hospital decides to proceed with the program, the group dispatches its soldier to help “give Satan and his servants a message they will never forget.” Within the framework of this well-sustained, suspenseful thriller, Edwards effectively examines issues of medical morality and ethics, corporate greed, and office politics. At one point, Forester tells Zellie why Gavin, “an old-fashioned idealist,” never liked the Gilchrist Tube Project: “Because it was being pushed so hard. And the funding sources weren’t transparent. That wasn’t how things should be.” While the appearance of sinister villains pulling the strings behind the scenes borders on cliché, other key players are empathetically fleshed out with motives that, while reprehensible, are true to their characters.
This sequel is just what the doctor ordered and gives the budding franchise a shot of adrenaline.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9890855-2-6
Page Count: 388
Publisher: Pascal Editions
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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