The Carrier [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Holden Scott (Author), Dick Hill (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2000

Jack Collier is a brilliant but troubled Ph.D. candidate at Harvard - the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. But he has an idea that will make medical history: train Strep A bacteria (also known as flesh eating bacteria) to attack tumors rather than healthy flesh. When his mentor, a renowned professor, steals Jack's idea and sets him up to get expelled from Harvard, Jack is devastated and nearly destroyed. But something has gone wrong with the cure and as Jack travels across the country, he unknowingly leaves a wake of deaths in his tracks. A sympathetic FBI agent wants to find Jack and stop him - before those that want to see his genius silenced find him first.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One might wonder what thriller authors occupied themselves with before the onslaught of biotechnology: gene splicing, smart viruses, cloning techniques, and PCR-polymerase chain reactions are the current darlings of a host of writers, including Gary Braver (Elixir), Richard Preston (The Hot Zone), and Holden Scott (Skeptic). In Scott's second novel, The Carrier, Jack Collier, a Harvard Ph.D. candidate, has found a cure for cancer by engineering Streptococcus A bacteria--known to tabloid newspaper fans everywhere as flesh-eating bacteria--to recognize and attack tumors rather than healthy flesh. It's a personal victory as well as a scientific breakthrough: haunted for months by the knowledge that his girlfriend, Angie, is dying of ovarian cancer, Jack has labored endless hours in the hopes of saving her.

But altruism is a rare bird in academic circles, and Michael Dutton, Jack's adviser, steals his idea, sets him up to be expelled, and nearly destroys the young man. Desperate to reach Angie, Jack breaks into his own lab, stows his petri dishes in his backpack, and takes off on a cross-country race against time. He doesn't know that something has gone terribly wrong with the cure, and that he is leaving a trail of death behind him. With two FBI agents--one a sympathetic scientist (who, perhaps too neatly, is a breast-cancer survivor) and one a militant psychopath (intent not just on finding Jack, but on killing him)--in hot pursuit, Jack's journey is one of narrow escapes and personal redemption.

Scott spins a mean story; though his characters and prose are occasionally stiff, there's no denying his ability to make us keep turning pages. The keen irony of Jack's predicament--technology has made him both a savior and a killer--is well crafted, and Scott refrains from belaboring the point. One might wish for a bit more "science" in this biotech thriller; the moments when Jack is in the lab are by far the most interesting, but they don't come often enough. With luck, the author's next scientific foray will rely more on the nitty-gritty, the test tubes and the electron microscopes. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In a medical thriller that's a fast-moving but far-fetched follow-up to his debut Skeptic, Scott throws caution to the wind. Harvard Ph.D. candidate Jake Collier is expelled from school for plagiarism. Collier has been framed, however--by his acclaimed but corrupt mentor, Michael Dutton, who has plotted against his prot?g? to steal his breakthrough cure for cancer, which involves training flesh-eating bacteria to attack tumors rather than healthy flesh. Collier steals back the cure, and goes in search of his lost love, Angie, who is dying of ovarian cancer and whom he hopes to save. But something goes terribly wrong with the miracle cure, turning Collier unwittingly into the carrier of a deadly mutant strain that decimates a human body within seconds of physical contact with the carrier. After he leaves a trail of bodies in New York's Penn Station, the FBI becomes involved, but Collier evades both thuggish agent Vincent Moon, who has orders to kill him on sight, and Bureau scientist Tyler Ross, who isn't so quick to perceive the carrier as a monster. During a cross-country chase, Collier realizes why his body has turned deadly; with Ross on his side, he must escape the blood lust of Moon if he is going to transform from murderous to miraculous. The novel exhibits a hell-bent momentum that makes for quick reading, but inconsistencies hamper its flow. Characters are hobbled by cliched dialogue and colorless personalities, and the final plot twists are implausible. With a tighter grip on the characters, motives and science at its heart, Scott's imaginative tale might have been the horrifying, memorable thriller that it isn't. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio Unabridged; Unabridged edition (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567403735
• ISBN-13: 978-1567403732
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,370,231 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good read for thriller fans, May 7, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Carrier (Hardcover)

Jack Collier has a brilliant idea that will not only attain him his Ph.D. from Harvard, but cure cancer. However, his faculty advisor Dr. Dutton steals the ideal of training Strep A bacteria to eat tumors leaving Jack expelled for plagiarism and feeling heartbroken.

Jack flees Harvard to seek his former girlfriend who is dying from cancer. However, unbeknownst to Jack he has become infected with his cure, turning him into a modern day but deadlier Typhoid Mary. He kills anyone who comes in physical contact with him. With the FBI wanting to stop Jack before others die, while others want Jack dead before he reveals the truth, he continues his trek cross country to try to save a life.

THE CARRIER is an exciting, fast-paced medical thriller that falls a bit short of being a classic horror tale. The story line moves so fast that readers will finish it quickly, but feel very little towards the characters in the process. Even though this tale is not quite what it could have been, any one skeptical about Holden Scott's talent will realize he is a major player who needs to know speed kills interesting plots, even one that is still fun to read.

Harriet Klausner

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4 1/2 star, June 30, 2000

By 

Konrad Kern (OFallon, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Carrier (Hardcover)

Jack Collier invents a potential cure for cancer using the 'Streptococcus A' bacteria. Jack's professor and mentor, Michael Dutton, steals the cure and gets Jack expelled from school. Something goes wrong with the cure when Dutton tries to make it his own. People start dying and soon everybody is after Jack Collier thinking he sabotaged the cure.

Jack's run across the country to look for his ex-girlfriend who is dying from cancer(his main reason to find a cure), provides a lot of thrills. The whole novel moves at a rapid pace and is definitely one of those hard to put down books. A good biological thriller thats also a quick read

Highly recommended

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A waste of time. . ., September 7, 2000

By 

M. Desoer (Bay Area, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Carrier (Hardcover)

I seriously considered giving this book a lower rating, but it was not horrible, just a waste of time given the plethora of well written books out there. I really don't understand all the other glowing reviews.

"The Carrier" is a badly-written, far-fetched and scientifically suspect "medical thriller." Don't get me wrong, I understand the need to "suspend belief" when reading many novels. However, the improbabilities and inaccuracies in this one hit you in the face. To top it off, the characters are two-dimensional caricatures, none of whom you end up caring about. This combination left me eager to finish the book, just so I could put it aside.

Also, will someone please tell me where the editors are these days? The text is repetitive (for example, he "explains" several times how he (a) created and (b) is going to "fix" the bacteria-gone-bad), there are disgraceful spelling errors ("affect" used improperly instead of "effect"), someone should have told him that active verbs are preferable, and the tale contains rampant blatant factual errors (yes, the author is a man, but couldn't someone tell him that 25 year-old women don't have "regular mammograms," let alone BEFORE being examined manually). These examples may sound picky, but they are representative of the sloppiness which I felt permeated this novel, and distracted from the story. Even the dates on which the events supposedly happen don't add up.

In any case, I would advise "passing" on this book unless you are really out of better books to read.