Heat Shock - Hardcover

Greer, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892967536 ISBN 13: 9780892967537

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2003

Synopsis

Reluctantly agreeing to help a patient to protect his flock of valuable gamecocks, Dr. Carmen Nguyen discovers that the birds, who were raised on uranium-rich soil, hold chromosomal information that a ruthless businessman is trying to steal.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Greer lives in Denver, Colorado.

From Booklist:

Most medical thrillers deliver their chills in a cold laboratory atmosphere. Greer, a practicing surgical pathologist and research scientist, yanks the chain of the genre by setting most of his shocks in the scruffy outreaches of the Colorado High Plains. Readers are pulled into the back roads of illegal cockfighting before they realize they've embarked on an adventure yarn heavily laced with science fiction; the result is satisfyingly unnerving. Greer excels at both plot and characterization. His trio of amateur sleuths here fairly leap off the page in their well-limned humanity. They include a female emergency room doctor, who has faced a lifetime of ostracism because of being "my den," half-black, half-Vietnamese; an old man dying of cancer, thanks to years in the mines; and a whitewater river rafter obsessed with the death of a 10-year-old boy. The old man's superstar game cocks--fighting cocks that shatter the competition--are sought after by agents for a research science lab, who use stealth, wealth, and murder to get what they want. The scientists are convinced that the game cocks have a radical protective trait that could lead to a race of "invincibles." The ER doctor, against her rules of conduct, gets pulled into the old man's life and promises to look after his birds. This triggers a chain of assaults and murders that result in the three broken people investigating the lab themselves. Reading Greer is like being hooked up to an I.V. that steadily drips suspense. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0892967536
• ISBN 13: 9780892967537
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320