Customer Reviews

Tainted: A Dr. Zol Szabo Medical Mystery

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book turned me from an asleep-by-ten reader to a gotta-finish-this-before-I-go-to-sleep bleary-eyed wreck. Pennie's Dr. Zol Szabo is an improbable hero, a public health bureaucrat. Ho-hum, I thought, another Yuppie doctor story. I'll just read fifty pages or so and toss it. But Zol turned out to be far more than I expected. He's quirky, multi-dimensional, courageous, adventurous, vulnerable and smart. And a single father with a decent kid. The story, a satisfyingly detailed, fast-moving hunt for the sources of a deadly mad-cow variant, takes the investigators from gourmet groceries to a sleazy mink farm to bureaucratic hideouts, all set in a Canadian landscape.
Some things I liked:
--the names. No Brads, Haleys, Justins, or Stephanies here--instead there are names with heft and texture: Zol and Max Szabo, Dr. Hamish Wakefield, Ermalinda the housekeeper, his assistant Natasha Sharma, and so on.
--the places, including my all-time favorite place name,Moose Testicles, the place unsuccessful bureaucrats fear to go. And the grisley mink farm and meat-processing plant. And Canada in the late fall. I'm so tired of New York and L.A.
Fast-paced story,interesting settings, complex and interesting cast, what'snot to like. I bought an extra copy for my book club.

Ross Pennie's first Dr. Sol Szabo book is a tightly written mystery thriller populated by unforgettable characters, believable threats, and a quick pace that never seems rushed. Dr. Szabo battles the believable bureaucracy of public health while dealing with some very real closer to home threats.
Best thing about the story (without giving anything away, and other than the believable storyline) are the characters. Pennie makes us care about them all, even the secondary characters, and I'm eager to see how their relationships develop in his next book in the series.

Hard to believe this is a debut novel. Pennie's mystery sizzles with suspense and incredibly believable plot. Having spent my career involved with government, I can attest to the insights about the political motivations of those sworn to 'protect' us. There are plenty of plausible misdirects and red herrings in this story to keep the mystery alive until the very end. The writing is very good. The plotting is great. I give it four stars instead of five because it takes several chapters for me to care about Dr. Zol. Pennie is a Doc and is clearly enthralled with the scientific aspect of his story. But lesson one in writing is that readers care about people first and story only second (my own writer weakness too). When the woman showed up in the story and I saw another dimension of Zol, the entire book came to life for me. That's an interesting observation because Pennie shows the human side of Zol from the outset with his display of the relationship with his son. But for me, the son was never a fully developed character until the very end. Perhaps if the threat to the son had come earlier...whereas his new love interest was very real and very imminent from her first appearance. Sure I wanted to know what was killing the residents of the Province. Almost as much as I wanted to know if Zol and his new love interest would connect. I'm definitely reading the next in the series. Because now it's about Zol, not science.

Too bad I couldn't give it ZERO stars! I picked up this book recently and barely made it a third of the way through......YIKES! The poor writing and lack of a coherent story line made it seem as if it were written by a high school student. Actually, my apologies to all high school students out there - you would have done it better! I'd grade it a "D".