X-Files: Skin (The X-Files, 6) - Hardcover

Mezrich, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061050415 ISBN 13: 9780061050411

Publisher: HarperEntertainment, 1999

Synopsis

A novel based on the hit television series created by Chris Carter

It's a fairly common, if ghoulish, procedure: the "harvesting" of skin from corpses for temporary use on emergency burn victims until their own grafts are ready. But when a team of moonlighting medical students accidentally takes skin from the wrong donor, the results are catastrophic: a New York City hospital ward is destroyed in a psychotic bloodbath, and an elderly professor, admitted for a routine skin graft, is suddenly the city's most wanted fugitive.

Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are the only ones to suspect something more ominous than a medical procedure gone awry. As the FBI agents investigating the "X-Files"--strange and inexplicable cases the Bureau wants to keep hidden, Mulder and Scully are determined to track down the forces they suspect are behind the murderer.

While the police hunt the fleeing professor, Mulder and Scully track the skin that was mistakenly grafted onto him. The trail leads from the morgue to the headquarters of a cutting-edge biotech company. Soon Mulder and Scully are in Thailand, searching the jungles for an abandoned MASH Unit, where napalm victims were treated with an amazing recovery rate--even though none of the hundreds of men who were nursed back to health ever returned to their families.

Scully is looking for an experimental medical technology with disastrous side effects. Mulder suspects the stakes are even higher, a fear gruesomely confirmed as they begin to uncover an unholy and totally deniable alliance between a battle-trained plastic surgeon, international politicians, and a legendary Thai monster known as the "Skin-Eater."

About this title

Review:

Skin has an authentic X-Files feel to it--the right mixture of scientific plausibility and mystical overtones to keep both Scully and Mulder interested and on the trail. Skin taken from an unknown body found at the site of a road accident is grafted over the burns suffered by a mild-mannered professor who then goes berserk, killing a nurse. Mulder and Scully try to trace the source of the skin graft and uncover links with a biotech company called Fibrol International, whose deceased CEO, Emile Paladin, was in charge of a MASH unit in a village in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Traveling to the remote village, Mulder is intrigued to learn about a local cult that worships a mythical monster, the Gin-Korng-Pew, or Skin Eater. Meanwhile, Scully follows more prosaic leads in search of Paladin's reclusive brother.

Mezrich's descriptions of medical procedures feel authentic, and he keeps the story moving along at a good pace, with several dangerous moments for both Mulder and Scully and a significant body count among the witnesses. The mixture of FBI investigation, horror, and the occult, with overtones of paranoia about the activities of the military, should appeal to X-Files fans, while others may enjoy it as an entertaining adventure. --Liz Sourbut, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Ben Mezrich graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991. He has published twelve books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies in twelve languages and became the basis for the Kevin Spacey movie 21. Mezrich has also published the national bestsellers Sex on the Moon, Ugly Americans, Rigged, and Busting Vegas. He lives in Boston.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperEntertainment
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0061050415
• ISBN 13: 9780061050411
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272