Reviews

"Based on actual, cutting-edge research," says the press release, which is scary when you realize that Dr. Mike Ballantine has discovered evidence that ghosts exist. There's a murder here, too. A debut for 28-year-old Harvard grad Scott.

An intriguing, high-flown scientific thesis that links new knowledge of viruses with extrasensory capabilities and unearthly communication with the dead propels Scott's promising debut novel. In the virology research lab of Boston's Metro Hospital, ambitious Ph.D. candidate Teri Pace is confirming a startling discovery about the transfer of information-bearing DNA from one living organism to another while, at the same time, on nearby Beacon Street, Mike Ballantine, M.D., chief of medicine at Metro, is riding in an ambulance in the inauguration parade behind the limo of his best friend, who has just been reelected Massachusetts governor. To his horror, Mike witnesses the governor's sudden and mysterious demise: he is vaporized by a bomb of unaccountable force. Shortly afterward, Mike starts seeing ghosts. Sexy Taiwanese-born CIA agent Amber Chen, who is shadowing spectral Chinese assassin Sheshen, joins Mike in trying to unravel the mystery of the malevolent Chinese Triad's involvement in these mysterious events. Arcane Eastern mysticism, space-age biogenetic research and murder are interwoven in a tapestry of shady money, international politics and star-crossed romance as Mike and Amber try to prevent the theft of the secret of human memory-transfer in a diabolical (if never quite clear) plan to control the world. For much of the narrative, Scott's simple action-driven prose is effective, offering bold characterization and high-concept biomedical thrills. In the denouement, however, the dialogue and exposition rapidly disintegrate, and the heretofore intricate, well-spun tale crosses over into more inconsistent, overwrought pulp territory. Still, this is an auspicious debut. Author tour. (Mar.) FYI: A '91 graduate of Harvard, Scott was inspired to write this novel by scientific research gleaned from Jack McConnell, M.D., co-founder of the Institute for Genomic Research and of the Human Genome Project.

YA-A techno-medical thriller of the genre made famous by Michael Crichton and Robin Cook, this imaginative story is nevertheless quite original. Physician Mike Ballantine witnesses the horrible bomb blast that kills his best friend, the governor of Massachusetts. Having lost his wife in a commuter plane crash two years before, Mike is ready to believe that he has succumbed to post-traumatic stress disorder when he hallucinates a horse wandering through the halls of Metro Hospital shortly after the blast. What he doesn't realize is that one of his graduate students, working in his neglected virology lab in Metro's basement, has made a scientific discovery of momentous importance: ghosts do exist. They result from infection by pieces of benign viruses (viroles) set free from the cells of a traumatically deceased person. A few susceptible people who are exposed to the trauma site can inhale viroles carrying genetic pieces of memory, thought, and visions from the dead that will be incorporated into their own mind. They will then "see" memories originally recorded in the mind of the departed. Of course, nefarious villains, surreptitiously aware of this groundbreaking study, will stop at nothing to get the completed research from Ballantine's lab. The body count piles up and the race is on. The science is feasible, the plot mostly plausible, and the action engrossing.-Carol DeAngelo, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.