THE SEVENTH SLEEPER

Nude comatose bodies with their fingerprints burned off lead Dr. Sara Copley from Miami's slums to the brilliant but mad Dr. Emile Vidoc's laboratory in the Everglades, where he conducts inhuman experiments

Dantz's ( Pulse ) suspenseful medical thriller features nightmarish villain Dr. Emile Vidoc, a self-confessed sociopath who has discovered a new way to recruit soldiers for guerrilla warfare. Through the use of neurotoxins, Vidoc induces in "volunteers" a coma-like state in which their minds remain alert while their bodies are paralyzed. A shot of adrenaline mixed with certain psychotropic drugs revitalizes the victims but leaves them in a psychopathic rage, with obsessive thoughts of murder and with physical powers that border on the superhuman. When Dr. Sara Copley and Miami police detective Lee Valdez begin searching for a friend of Sara's who has disappeared, they stumble onto Vidoc's terrifying plans and must act quickly to avoid becoming his next victims. Although Dantz, aka mystery writer W. R. Philbrick, occasionally lapses into stage-direction-like prose, this tale is a page-turner.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An idealistic young physician fights a diabolical medical conspiracy in the latest stethoscope-suspenser by...W.R. Philbrick (Walk on the Water, p. 217, etc.), writing as Dantz (the paperback Pulse, 1990), writing a lot like Robin Cook. Though not exactly like Cook--Dantz lacks his model's endearing goofiness--but still firing up strong suspense as he pits pretty Dr. Sara Copley, who's forsaken a glitter-track Boston career to sweat in Florida's public-health trenches, against Dr. Emile Vidoc, a genuinely creepy, Shakespeare-quoting villain who removes all his body hair and whose youthful recognition of himself as a sociopath led to his development of the ``Vidoc Method''--a technique, using rare neurotoxins, to create perfect warriors: zombies capable of being triggered into homicidal rages. Sara first runs into Vidoc's deviltry when Miami Missing Persons detective Lee Valdez calls her to look at a comatose body: Is it ``Surfer Dave,'' buddy of Sara's old boyfriend Kurt who disappeared around Miami a few months back? It is, and the picturesque trails that Sara and Valdez follow from Surfer Dave to Kurt--ranging from sunny beaches to Miami's Santeria underworld--all lead to Vidoc. Meanwhile, other comatose ``sleepers'' are unearthed, with one running bloodily amok in an O.R. after being revived by a venal doctor. Several ancillary villains emerge--a Cuban-exile kingpin, his sadistic sidekick, and a homicidal redneck giant--and commit gleeful mayhem in support of Vidoc until Sara and Valdez, now lovers, track the mad doctor to his Everglades lair, where he's demonstrating the Method to some wealthy Bolivian warmongers. Bullets and body parts fly in the all- stops-out finale, which winds up on a surprisingly cynical note. Formulaic and far-fetched, but piping hot, with zippy plot turns and imaginative use of the colorful Florida scenery. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The Florida Everglades are the eerie setting for the author's second medical thriller ( Pulse was the first); he's mystery writer W.R. Philbrick, writing under a pseudonym. Emile Vidoc, brilliant medical doctor and psychopath, finds a combination of drugs that turns young men into wild, demented "fighting machines" who can feel no pain. He hopes to fuel guerrilla warfare in Central America, and to make a handsome personal profit. But his scheme is discovered by a public health physician in Miami. When she teams up with a Missing Persons detective, the two encounter Vidoc's "recruits," lying comatose in an abandoned van. A lively pace, crisp writing, and a twist at the end make the book better than average, but its overdose of violence may upset some readers.
- Joyce Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.