Amazon.com Review
Dr. Isabel McLain, lately shy of a cushy life and a very bad marriage, has shucked it all and bolted east to the impoverished Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Browning, Montana. It's there, shortly into her doctoring tenure, that young and healthy Joe Winged Foot comes into the clinic with shortness of breath and comes out, shortly thereafter, dead, the first of several Blackfoot to succumb to the rare, contagious, deadly, and nearly untreatable hantavirus.
Coincidentally, Dr. Ken MacStirling's newly developed hantavirus vaccine is only waiting on a clinical trial. Fortunate, yes? Not according to activist tribal lawyer, Monty Four Bear, who states that better circumstances would prevail if a population other than his own were used as guinea pigs.
"I had some of the same thoughts." Before Monty even had time to respond, Isabel McLain continued. "Why not wait, until the vaccine has been tested? But Dr. MacStirling pointed something out to me. We're talking years, years, before this product is on the market. In the meantime, how many more lives will this despicable disease claim? Even if the answer is only one, that's one too many. I will do everything in my power," her voice weakened momentarily, "... everything, to make sure that what happened to Joe and Will and Dolores doesn't happen again. Not here. Not on this reservation."
Isabel is fiery, committed, and gorgeous; ditto Monty; something goes seriously (and intentionally) awry with the vaccine; the two diametrically opposed firebrands join forces; canoodling ensues. Anyone surprised yet? Probably not, but in
Clinical Trial, April Christofferson's second medical thriller (see 1999's
The Protocol) the author wisely dishes up enough sympathetic good guys and ancillary bad guys--Isabel's crooked and licentious husband, Alistair; nasty players from an even nastier Canadian mining outfit; a furious Soviet scientist working for MacStirling's biotech firm, et al.--to crowd out the lack of depth and to keep us happily wondering for long enough which Reds are herrings and which are not.
--Michael Hudson
From Publishers Weekly
Set mostly on a Montana Blackfoot reservation, this well-constructed fourth thriller from Christofferson (The Protocol) features a fine cast of heroes and villains battling over medical ethics, drug-company tactics and the hard facts of reservation life. As the story begins, Dr. Isabel McLain has fled her failed Seattle marriage for the reservation's small medical clinic, where she has grown involved in the difficult life of the tribe. Then the rare, fast-acting hantavirus kills three of her patients. An Oregon biotech company, ImmuVac, wants to test its hantavirus vaccine on the reservation. Is ImmuVac simply trying to save Blackfoot lives or is it unscrupulously using Native Americans as guinea pigs? Despite her misgivingsDand objections from local teacher and activist Monty Four BearDIsabel okays the trials: her reputation, and the health of the tribe, will depend on their outcome. Meanwhile, national worries about biowarfare makes the vaccine for hantavirus particularly lucrative: What risks will ImmuVac take to reap the profits, and what else is on the company's agenda? And why has Isabel's vengeful ex-husband, a doctor himself, turned up on the rez? Christofferson's smooth plotting and prose show the dexterity of a novelist coming into her own. She's especially good with her large cast of Blackfoot characters, who reveal themselves and their histories gradually through the choices they make. The pharmaceutical-industry intrigues come across as merely workmanlike; yet the strands of Christofferson's plot twine together to combine strong characters with a satisfying conclusion, one that more than lives up to her previous work. Agent, Julie Castiglia.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
