A Slow Burning - Softcover

Pottinger, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340695927 ISBN 13: 9780340695920

Publisher: Dutton, 2000

Synopsis

The author of the New York Times bestseller The Fourth Procedure is back with a provocative thriller that takes readers to a place where memories can become a living nightmare.

A brilliant scientist is close to an astonishing neurological breakthrough that will alter the very nature of who we think we are . . . a hard-boiled cop stumbles upon the merciless killer who had murdered his father twenty years earlier . . . a woman who lies in a coma is given one last, desperate chance at life. All meet with shattering consequences in this latest novel from Stanley Pottinger-a bestselling author who combines the intelligent, well-researched storytelling ability of Michael Crichton with the gritty crime realism of Michael Connelly. In A Slow Burning, Pottinger skillfully mixes colorful, complex characters with a hauntingly plausible story, weaving an unforgettable tale of deception, murder, and science going too far.

* The Fourth Procedure was a New York Times bestseller in both its hardcover and paperback editions.

About this title

Review:

Nat Hennessey, a New York cop, is about to marry Camilla Bissonette when the past catches up with both of them in this complicated thriller by the author of The Fourth Procedure. Nat's father was beaten to death by a black man who never paid for his crime. He believes he has no racial bias against African-Americans, but Cush Walker, a brilliant black scientist who's convinced he's found the neurobiological basis of racism in the human brain, thinks otherwise. Walker has his own haunted past; his father was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 60s. Now Walker proposes to scan the brains of the NYPD for racial bias, a prospect that alarms Nat and his colleagues. But that's not the only reason for Nat's antipathy toward the scientist; Walker and Camilla were once lovers, and the reason she broke off their affair is somehow related to his experimental procedure. But just as she's about to tell Nat about Cush--and reveal an even murkier secret about the circumstances of her own birth--she's shot by the criminal who killed Nat's father. In laboratory and operating room scenes that will appeal to fans of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton, Cush tries to bring Camilla out of her coma with a risky, potentially fatal, and untested procedure that puts Nat's life in peril too. Slow Burning isn't an easy read, but it's a fascinating one that attempts to combine cutting-edge neuroscience with an explanation for the deep-seated racism that Pottinger believes bedevils everyone. Scientific explanations slow down the pace, and occasionally the characters seem like talking heads instead of complete and complex individuals, but it's the implications of Pottinger's thesis that will disturb the reader and resonate in the mind after the last page is turned. --Jane Adams

About the Author:

Stanley Pottinger is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He practiced law in California and served as Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and as Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. He has argued four cases before the Supreme Court. Mr. Pottinger has three grown children and lives in the New York City area. A Slow Burning is his second novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dutton
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0340695927
• ISBN 13: 9780340695920
• Binding: Paperback