Mind Catcher [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

John Darnton (Author), Dick Hill (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2002

New York City: A thirteen-year-old boy named Tyler lies in a hospital, his brain damaged in a tragic accident. By his bedside, his father stands helplessly, as two very different scientists take charge of the boy's fate. One is a neurosurgeon, whose unorthodox experiments use computers to control a patient's physical responses during surgery. The other is a researcher with experiments of his own, ones so secret he can reveal them to no one: his attempts to find the spark of human consciousness...and capture it forever. Together, they will produce a result beyond anything they could have conceived, sending Tyler far beyond the frontiers of medical science into an astonishing netherworld of man and machine - a place no living person has gone before and from which one desperate person will try to bring him back....

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but neither pioneering neurosurgeon Leo Saramaggio nor Warren Cleaver, a brilliant researcher seeking to unravel the mystery of the soul and recreate it in a microchip, has any intention of letting that happen to Tyler, a 13-year-old boy whose brain is all but destroyed in a freak accident that leaves him closer to death than life. John Darnton, the author of two previous scientific thrillers (Neanderthal, The Experiment), offers a provocative glimpse of what lies beyond the frontiers of both medicine and artificial intelligence in this clearly well-researched and tightly plotted thriller that's bound to provoke comparisons to Robin Cook and Michael Crichton. Unlike them, Darnton is able to tell a gripping story without dumbing down the science or shortchanging the characters, even those who aren't central to the plot, like Tyler's father, Scott, or Kate Willett, a neurosurgery resident who suspects that her superiors have gone way beyond the boundaries of ethical practice in their treatment of Scott's injured son. This is a fast-paced, suspenseful thriller that demonstrates Darnton's increasing command of the genre and holds out the possibility that in his next book, he'll surpass it. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

At Manhattan's renowned St. Catherine's Hospital, brilliant neurosurgeon Leopoldo Saramaggio does pioneering research on healing the damaged brain by linking it to computers that can take over its functions temporarily. Unbeknownst to the imperious Saramaggio, colleague Dr. Warren Cleaver, a fame-hungry mad scientist in the Hollywood tradition, carries out illegal experiments with mentally ill patients at run-down Pinegrove Hospital on Roosevelt Island. Cleaver's experiments take Saramaggio's work to dangerous extremes. Thirteen-year-old Tyler Jessup is rushed to St. Catherine's after a piece of rock-climbing equipment gets lodged in his head. His distraught father, Scott, a famous photographer and single parent, agrees to let Saramaggio try his new technique on Tyler, convinced that it's his son's only chance. Second thoughts quickly follow and, assisted by beautiful Dr. Kate Willet, new on the staff at St. Catherine's, Scott battles to get his initial consent reversed. The story sags as Scott and Kate grow closer, a development dictated more by literary convention than logic or character chemistry, but it quickens again when Tyler's bodily functions fail and evil Cleaver whisks him away for his Frankenstein experiments. Darnton, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Neanderthal and The Experiment, writes elegantly, but maroons the novel in no-man's-land: too short on action and suspense to fully succeed as a thriller, it lacks the character depth to convince as serious fiction.
Copyright 2002 Cahners 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: Nova Audio Books; Abridged edition (August 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590862236
• ISBN-13: 978-1590862230
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,269,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Biomedical Thriller Chiller, March 2, 2003

By 

Louis N. Gruber "Author of Jay" (Lexington, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mind Catcher (Hardcover)

Tyler Jessup, thirteen years old, is on an outing in the mountains when he is struck down in a freak accident--a heavy piece of climbing equipment buried deep in his brain. Fortunately the best neurosurgeon in the country is available and agrees to take the case; unknown to Tyler's desperate father, Dr. Saramaggio is also involved in some--shall we say--questionable research.

The book starts with this premise, tells us a lot about the brain and about the frontiers of research, the possibility of rebuilding the brain with neural stem cells, but then veers off into metaphysics. Can the mind be somehow separated from the brain, extracted by a computer, exist somewhere outside of space and time? And would the world's greatest neurosurgeon do anything--anything--no matter how unethical, to pursue his unorthodox research and the glory that might go with it?

This should be a great book, and at moments it is. It almost works. Unfortunately the writing is uneven, the characters inconsistent, and the events are foreshadowed to such a degree that they lose a lot of their punch by the time they actually happen. At times the narrative drags. There are too many literary cliches--the "mad scientist" mentioned by other reviewers, the grieving father drinking himself into oblivion, the decaying "asylum" from another century with no evidence of modern hospital practice. The unlikely romance...

Then the contrived ending left me with more questions than answers. Well, it was a good book and you will probably enjoy it, but it could have been better. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brain candy a la mode., May 17, 2004

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mind Catcher (Paperback)

John Darnton, Mindcatcher (Onyx, 2002)

Darnton's latest novel has all sorts of nifty stuff going for it, not least a punchy, adrenaline-rousing plot. Tyler, a thirteen-year-old boy, has been injured in a rock climbing accident. Two scientists, brain surgeon Leopoldo Saramaggio and artificial intelligence guru Warren Cleaver, see Tyler as the gateway to performing a revolutionary new experiment that could further the medical field by orders of magnitude. At the other end of the spectrum are Tyler's father Scott and Kate Willett, one of Saramaggio's team, who find themselves confused by the ethical ramifications of what the two doctors are up to. Add to this a mutual animosity underlying the necessity of collaboration between Saramaggio and Cleaver, and you have all the makings for a decent medical thriller.

And decent it is, if overly wrapped in cliché and a little predictable at times. Darnton draws his characters well and invests them with real emotion, when they're not spouting phrases that were old when Shakespeare was writing soap operas. The pace rarely leaves breakneck level, and usually gets back up to speed within a few pages. The book goes quickly, especially once the operation begins about ninety pages in. It's good brain candy, gripping but eminently forgettable. An excellent beach read, as we head for another summer. *** ½

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soul in Cyberspace, August 14, 2002

By 

Frederick H. Dulles (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mind Catcher (Hardcover)

Mind Catcher is a great read! It is a driving story. A boy suffers a massive head injury. His father goes to all lengths to have him cared for properly and with dignity. An arrogant superstar brain surgeon and his kooky computer-wiz colleague want to carry out revolutionary procedures to restore his brain and his life. The surgeon wants to keep the boy alive connected to a computer and then extract brain cells to be cultivated in a lab and reimplanted into his brain. The computer-wiz plans to extract the boy's mind, his "anima", out of his brain and have it float around in cyberspace. The story raises and teases you with age-old questions about the concept of a soul, its relation to the body and the brain, and its eternal presence. The thriller plot develops in ways one does not expect. The characters are engaging. The style is clear and direct. It is a book you cannot put down.