Review of Flashback (Hardcover)

The author has written a pharmaceutical thriller that will keep the readerturningthe pages of the book until the very last. It is a fairly well-written, suspenseful novel that heralds a novelist whose prose is spare, lean, and taut, moving the story along at a brisk pace. Although it is wholly a plot driven, rather than character driven, book, the two main characters are sufficiently fleshed out. Some of the secondary ones, however,are less so. Although not as good as two of the other books that the author has written, "Elixir" and "Gray Matter", both of which are five star reads, fans of Michael Crichton and Robin Cook will, undoubtedly, enjoy this well-paced thriller, as will anyone who appreciates a good story.

The story line is fairly simple. A young couple with a shaky marriage, Jack and Beth Koryan, are on the brink of changing their lives, but not in a way that they would ever have imagined. On the eve of Jack fulfilling a dream of openinga restaurant with his best friend, disaster strikes. While commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of his mother's mysterious death, Jack has a one in a million run-in with a school of rare jellyfish. Attacked and repeatedly stung by these jellyfish, Jack sustains toxic burns that send poison into his bloodstream, causing him to enter into a comatose state.

Meanwhile, a pharmaceutical lab has created "Memorine", a drug that is believed to be a miracle cure for Alzheimer's disease, and the origin of this wonder drug is the toxin of the same jellyfish that attacked Jack. Drug trials are being conducted on nursing home patients that are suffering from Alzheimer's disease. At first blush, patients are responding favorably to the drug. Some, however, begin having disturbing flashbacks into their pasts that act as a catalyst for violent, and seeming inexplicable, acts committed by thesepatients.

When a police investigation ensues into a murder committed by one of these patients, Rene' Ballard, a pharmaceutical consultant for a pharmacy responsible for providing medications to patients of nursing homes, is drawn into the picture. Sensing that things are not adding up, she investigates and discovers a web of deceit that has kept her out of the loop and caused patients to be medicated with this miracle memory drug without her knowledge. At stake are the millions that are to be made with the release of this drug into the open market. Rene' Ballard has reservations about the release of the drug, making her a persona non grata to the pharmaceutical lab sponsoring the drug trials.

The parallel stories of Jack Koryan and Rene' Ballard converge, uniting these two protagonists, as it becomes clear that much of what happens to Jack during his recovery lies at the heart of the problem with the drug. As have many of the Alzheimer's patients, he, too, suffers from disturbing flashbacks.For him, however, those flashbacks may enable him to unravel the mystery behind his mother's death.

There are those, however, who do not wish him to do so. They are the same people who will stop at nothing to prevent Rene' Ballard from interfering with the projected release of the drug. Moreover, Jack's personal quest will intersect with the pharmaceutical lab that is hell bent on releasing "Memorine", resulting in a head on collision that causes a pulse pounding series of events to occur. While the ending may come as no surprise to the discerning reader, it is, nonetheless, an enjoyable read.

This novel is multi-layered and well-researched, providing a fairly engrossing read, while proffering a whole host of ethical and public policy dilemmas for consideration. This pharmaceutical thriller provides much food for thought,buried between its lines, and is a book that educates, as well as entertains.



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