Mosaic - Softcover

John R. Maxim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749931574 ISBN 13: 9780749931575

Publisher: Piatkus, 2000

Synopsis

The U.S. government has sanctioned two top-secret scientific experiments, both morally questionable and potentially devastating. The brainchild of a noted pop-psychologist - overseen by a shadowy figure known for his brutal efficiency and cold disregard for human life - these twin covert operations are each part of a dark and sinister agenda: an attempt to use Multiple Personality Disorder to create the perfect assassin. Major Roger Grayson's uncanny ability to adapt to any undercover situation by becoming seemingly different people makes him the ideal person to evaluate both these projects. On the orders of his superior, General Hoyt - a troubled and secretive officer whose own purposes remain murky and unclear - Grayson launches an investigation into the goings-on behind the electrified gates of the Belfair mental health research facility, an assignment that is leading him to unsettling doubts about the nature and humanity of these projects...and about who - or what - he really is. It is also leading him to Susannah Card, a beautiful, talented, and accomplished young woman who is everything the projects' masterminds are searching for: a natural "mosaic" - a multiple with total dominance over her separate personalities. But Grayson's attraction and growing feelings for Susannah is drawing a lethal nightmare from his past into their lives. And now it will take all of his exceptional skills to prevent Susannah from being sucked into a grim experiment born of greed and madness that is suddenly going brutally, horribly wrong.

About this title

About the Author

John R. Maxim is the author of several critically acclaimed thrillers, including Haven and Mosaic, both available from Brilliance Audio, and other highly praised novels, including Time Out of Mind, Abel Baker Charlie, and the bestselling Bannerman series. He makes his home in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

From the Inside Flap

The Bookcassette® format is a special recording technique developed as a means of condensing the full, unabridged audio text of a book to record it on fewer tapes. In order to listen to these tapes, you will need a cassette player with balance control to adjust left/right speaker output. Special adaptors to allow these tapes to be played on any cassette player are available through the publisher or some US retail electronics stores.

Reviews

A hodgepodge of a thriller about secret government experiments aimed at turning Multiple Personality Disorder into a positive. Major Roger Grayson is terrific at going undercover to penetrate noxious organizations. Among other sociopathic roles, he's played the vicious redneck and the ruthless neo-Nazi to great disruptive advantage. But now he's called upon to accept a sea change of an assignment: helping evaluate the mysterious effort overseen by pop psychologist Norman Zales at Belfair, a sort of gothic hideaway for MPDs. If the government-sanctioned experiments taking place there prove out, the nation will be able to field an enhanced breed of espionage agent. Consider: an agent is captured. She (virtually all MPDs are female) proceeds to frustrate the daylights out of her interrogators by a nifty shift of personality . . . Mata Hari into Orphan Annie, for instance. Or so goes the theory. Grayson is skeptical. He's also not sure he qualifies as the right person to do the evaluating. Nor does he understand why it's so important to the general, his boss, that he take the job. And when he begins to encounter bad guys, he's puzzled by what they're after. Grayson just cant fathom what's really going on at Belfair, or who's being kept there. Hes sent to track down Susannah, a naturalthat is to say, a multiple with push-button control over her contrasting cast of personalitiesbut he's not sure why. And neither is the reader. But after the big, bloody finish, we do know that the survivors are the good guys. Since some of them may be MPDs, however, the difficulty lies in counting noses. You need a scorecard to tell the Emmas from the Veronicas from the Theresas, and so on. And a really strong commitment to want to do it. This capable veteran has done better (Haven, 1997, etc.). -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Leave it to someone as clever as the author of Haven to come up with a crackerjack thriller premise based on MPD (multiple personality disorder). Dr. Norman Zales is the director of Project Chameleon, whose sinister experiment aims to produce a new breed of spies and assassins who can switch personalities from innocent bystander to stone- cold killer in no time. Under the direction of government agent Prentice Teal, Zales is using his female patients (almost all sufferers of MPD are female) as guinea pigs to create "mosaics"Apeople who can consciously control their metamorphoses into alternate personalities. Things come to a head when multitalented undercover agent Major Roger Grayson, who carries the physical and psychic scars of a near-fatal betrayal, is asked by a concerned general to investigate Zales and Teal. When an MPD patient commits a shocking crime, the subsequent coverup leads Grayson to the corrupt center of the experiment, a mental health research center, where young female victims of the insidious psychiatric network fight for their lives. At the heart of the labyrinthine mystery is a 10-year-old with near-miraculous powers and a reclusive woman called Susannah Card, both of whom are natural mosaics. Also participating in the fracas are some vengeful neo-Nazis, creepy fathers who've abused their daughters and then committed them to the institution (getting off scot-free as the girls become "turnips"), and a clever romantic triangle with only two people. Maxim's complex plot bounces from APA lingo to computer hacking clues to the murderous/amorous conversation between one woman's two personalities, culminating in a tense climax. As in Haven, Maxim uses the conventions of comedy and farceAmistaken identity, chance encounters, shifts of allegiance and a deus ex machinaAto exhilarating effect. This is top-notch thriller with a clever premise and equally proficient meditations on identity and character.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

MOSAIC is such a tangled weave of improbable plot and less likely characters that even Dick Hill's dynamic reading fails to save the day. In this offering, mosaics are people (mostly women) with multiple personality disorders, who are confined in an institution supervised by a vain psychiatrist and his evil wife. The hero, an army major, and his multiple-personality girlfriend (who are pursued by two militia killers) join forces and save the day. The only wonderful feature about this tape is Hill's performance. When a couple of multiples get together, Hill is called upon to demonstrate his versatility by portraying seven or eight personalities--both men and women--in tandem. Because Hill is so adept at voices, you can tell who is who--but you still can't figure out what's going on. A.L.H. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Edition details

• Publisher: Piatkus
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0749931574
• ISBN 13: 9780749931575
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416