Synopsis
A young neurologist, Dr. Clare Austen, must crack the secrets in the mind of a patient who can not remember witnessing the murder of her mentor. A first novel.
Reviews
In a highly original debut, first novelist Perry explores what happens when the left brain doesn't know what the right brain is doing. Dr. Clare Austen, a neurologist at Pasadena University, and prize research subject Tommy Dabrowski, a rock musician who underwent split brain surgery for epilepsy, collide in a darkened hallway with a man who has just killed Clare's mentor. Tommy grapples with the killer with his left arm, which is in the domain of his right brain. Unfortunately, Tommy's right brain can't communicate the information it gathered to the left brain, which controls language. More campus murders occur, requiring armed guards for Clare and Tommy until she can figure out how to access the knowledge trapped in Tommy's memory. Marathon lab experiments and close escapes from death lead to romance, to the chagrin of Tommy's New Age wife and Clare's stuffy lover. Objecting to their amateur sleuthing, the Pasadena police move the pair to the top of the suspect list, while Clare and Tommy investigate mean-spirited academics, grad students and even their own lovers. Antivivisectionists receive a nice plug and Perry, despite the questionable caper behind the killings, gets full marks for a neat premise, on the whole lucidly developed, and for well sustained suspense.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
First novel in which the identity of a brutal academic murderer lies locked in the surgically separated cerebral hemispheres of a rock musician. Handsome, sexy, upwardly mobile musician Tommy Dabrowski suffered so from epileptic seizures that he agreed to drastic treatment. Now, if his right brain knows what it's doing, it certainly isn't telling his left brain. The radical surgery has made Tommy terribly interesting to dedicated neurological researcher Dr. Clare Austen. After hours and hours and hours together in the laboratory, Tommy's healthy young body and cheeky charm have wreaked havoc with Dr. Austen's academic detachment, and it's all she can do to keep her mind on her neurological hypotheses. Researcher and subject are thrown closer together than ever when a fiend takes to bashing in the skulls of Dr. Austen's colleagues. Tommy collides with the murderer in a dark hallway and feels the monster up well enough to figure out who it is. But, alas, Tommy's feeling skills are on the wrong side of the gap from his chatting skills, and he can't tell Clare who it was he had a hold of. Clare begins a series of lab sessions to pry the secret from the recalcitrant lobe. The sessions are so many and so long and there are so many terrifyingly close encounters with the crazed killer that the exhausted experimenters fall victim to their mutual, unscientific lust. Clare's boyfriend pouts, Tommy's wife sulks, but they must take a backseat to research. The murderer is closing in.... Four times as long as it needs to be unless one is vitally interested in the details and variations of testing as they are applied to cerebro-cortical cross talk, in which case it's probably a rouser. Palindromes teem. Goodness knows why. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Perry, a television scriptwriter, has created a technothriller for the superintelligent. The book isn't exactly a light piece of froth; 19 scholarly research works in the field of neuroscience are listed in its bibliography. Dr. Clare Austen, a neurologist of small eminence, tests a split brain patient--a married rock musician many years her junior--and suffers agonies over their mutual attraction. One side of his brain has witnessed the murder of her research mentor, and it's the side that cannot remember or communicate. Doctor and patient race against time to uncover a ghastly secret, and to exonerate themselves from suspicion in the case. Although long and talky, this unusual mystery on the subject of animal rights will please discriminating readers who enjoy a challenging puzzle. For larger popular fiction collections.
- Joyce Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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