Customer Reviews

Probe

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2 star:		(1)
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Carole Nelson Douglas mixes genres masterfully in Probe. There is romance, mystery and science fiction in this story of a beautiful young woman lost to herself. Jane (Jane Doe) is both riveting and enraging as a character. She is a savant, a human computer and a child. The end result, romance between herself and the doctor assigned to her case, is brought about slowly as he and Jane realize the truth about her past

Wonderful story. I picked this up last night and couldn't put it down... it was written in 1985 - before the breakup of the Soviet Union.. in some ways, this dates the story and the actions of the CIA and the Probe researchers. It is easy enough to overlook though and does not distract from the main focus of the story - the struggle to unlock the mystery of one women's mind. Well worth the read.

Spoiler

The beginning was intriguing, the standard setup with an amnesia character. This character starts the scene by killing a cop through telekinesis though it was in a wierd misunderstood self defense kinda way. Fine, no problem. That sets up the tension/discovery angle. The character wakes up in a psychiatric hospital research facility.

So here is where i literally threw the book across the room. The whole point of stories like this is the anticipation of when the modern day doctors encounter the bizarre. In this case, the fact that their patient has telekinetic powers.

About 1/4 of the way through the book, this happens. One of the doctors who is funded by the military discovers that the character does in fact have telekinetic powers. She has documented several experiments.

The principle doctor/shrink finds out about it, sees a demonstration and guess what he does?

He confiscates her results and demands that the other doctor stop doing tests.

So let me get this straight. You are a doctor/researcher, and you stumble onto the holy grail of psychiatry-- a patient with ESP, and your first instinct is to cover it up? And to actually be upset?

So unrealistic.

It would be like an engineer discovering a real life Transformer, and then not finding it interesting.

So, I threw the book across the room and doubt i'll ever finish reading it.

If I do, I'll come back and give you an update.

I actually read this book in the late 1980's and bought another copy to re-read in 2003! Definitely a "girlie" SF book. I also highly recommend Carole Nelson Douglas Sword and Circlet series (starting with the "real" first book Six of Swords).