The Dark Land

The Dark Land by DM Shepard is subtitled “An Alaska Horror Novella.” I rarely read horror stories and this novella certainly qualifies for that genre. I was surprised when I actually got into the horror story which takes place in Alaska’s outback where one should expect to have contact with wild animals. However, one does not expect those creatures to be beasts of semi-human intelligence. The story began with the grisly death of a solo and drunken hunter, and we quickly learn about an outdoors woman, Penny, who went into the wilderness on her own for inexplicable reasons. She had not yet returned. Really, this is the story about Rose, a foster kid who grew up in the outback and knew how to handle herself in such territory. And there was Ulrik, a man several years older than Rose, who she had known since coming to the foster home run by Penny, and Rose had always been infatuated by him. Rose and Ulrik turned out to be a formidable duo who were capable of handling the nearly impossible situation in which they found themselves. If you are a fan of horror, then this books for you.

I Know Where You Sleep

I read “I Know Where You Sleep” by Alan Orloff in prepublication form. It has sense been released as an Amazon ebook. It’s a story about a young and beautiful woman Jessica Smith who could not shake a stalker. She sought help from Anderson West, a PI. And, when Jessica could not afford his fees, he quickly agreed to take this matter on a pro bono basis. From the beginning, the author let us know that Jessica was not a particularly believable person and did not give West all the necessary information about her past, including that she had formally changed her name 5 or 6 years earlier. As a reader, I did not find myself drawn to either of these primary characters. The most interesting character in the story was West’s sister Carrie who he was employing as an office manager and helper. As a younger woman she had a particularly dark story including having been savagely abused. In her attempt to master that old trauma, she had become a maniacal advocate for abused women, and she was sure that Jessica had been badly abused. But the flow of the plot was uneven and draggy in some long passages. I was about to abandon this story at about the 25% mark, but then Orloff introduced Carrie and that kept me engaged through the end of the novel. As much as I respect the author’s effort to spin the story, this one just did not work for me.

Veil

Veil is Eliot Peper’s  10th novel, and I read them all, so you know I’m a fan. His first three books have earned cult status in Silicon Valley since they deal with information that is familiar to that place. In this book, as he has in several, Peper writes about a near-future society which has evolved due to our current leaders’ inability or unwillingness to deal effectively with global warming. However, he does not leave us in a hopeless dystopian world, but suggests ways to deal with the science and political matters that should lead to a better world.

Peper writes about the Leon family’s involvement in all of this. Miranda Leon is the wonderful wife of Santiago, a brilliant but maniacal scientist, and they’ve given birth to Zia. Miranda dies due to a heat wave that killed 20 million, and Zia is sent to a special school for the wealthy and highly gifted students in Switzerland. This is where Zia finds a new group of friends  who become her family of creation rather than one based on her biology. Zia has become a master of saving people who have been trapped by the effects of climate change. The Maldives are underwater and there are almost no natural beaches left anywhere in the world due to the rising ocean levels. The earth’s population is being progressively driven to occupy smaller and smaller pieces of land. The massive storms that are occurring his damaging what’s left of our world.

Zia’s friend Galang has become a reporter of all that has gone wrong in the last 20-30 years, and he says to Zia, “After responding to natural disaster after natural disaster, you eventually start to realize that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster. There are only human disasters revealed by nature… The real disasters are poverty and shortsightedness.”

This is a quick read with both believable, full-bodied characters, and a convincing plot, leaving the reader with some hope that there’s a way out of our current climate mess.

Act of Deception

I pretty much raved about John Bishop MD’s first novel in the Doc Brady series, entitled Act of Revenge. Now, he’s released the second book, Act of Revenge, and you’ll have to tolerate another positive rave about this medical thriller by this reviewer. The protagonist, Dr. James Robert Brady, is an orthopedic surgeon working in Houston, and he specializing in doing hip and knee replacements. In this book, he’s the target of a malpractice claim by a patient whose knee replacement looked very good, but then became infected in the postoperative period. Treatment for the infection failed, and the patient ended up with an above-the-knee amputation.

I’ll admit that I’m biased in favor of orthopedic surgeons. My favorite med school mentor was a hotshot orthopedist who nearly had me convinced to follow him into his specialty (before I saw the light and became a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst), But, decades ago, I was privileged enough to serve as his first assistant on multiple patients who got hip and knee replacements. The surgeries were magical. And now I’ve benefitted from the continued improvement of the surgery and the materials that are used – I have an artificial hip which works great. But, I also saw a lot of things that did not go well. Infections are the bane of such operations.

As with his first book, the character development of Dr. Jim Bob, his wife, and those around him was excellent, and I only saw the plot come together near the end of this mystery – a very satisfying ending. I thought it was very realistic and there were both good guy attorneys, and despicable ones. I’ve also testified as an expert witness in a few medical malpractice cases, and I thought Dr. Bishop also captured the stress of being the target of a malpractice claim, as well as the impact of such on his family, colleagues, and friends.

This was an A+/5-star read. It’s due out in June 2020. And now I’m eager to see Bishop’s third book in this series which is to be published in September.