Customer Reviews

Venom: A Novel of Suspense

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4 star:		(1)
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Wealthy Springfield, Illinois resident physicist Helen Freyl owns a farm in Caton, Alabama. On her farm is a special honeybee hive that produces a type of honey, which can heal people; she is hiding there grieving the death of her lover.

The pharmaceutical industry upon hearing of the unique qualities of the honey claims the patent for the honeybee venom. Helen and her cantankerous grandmother battle the giants even as she joins a London based research team working on an antitoxin for radiation poisoning. However, Helen is stunned when she learns of scientific death testing research by Follation Medical Foundation in the Mogilev Region of Belarus near where the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl occurred almost twenty-five years ago. Grandma and granddaughter know their lives are unsafe so Helen turns to former con artist David Marion, who killed a hitman and set up his home to insure that everyone will assume he died in a house explosion.

Although lacking the consistent message of the previous Freyl-Marion teaming (see Bleedout) even with the obvious set up to do so, Venom in an exciting international thriller. The story line is fast-paced from the moment David visits the Judge who muses how freedom loving USA has more people in prison than dictatorial Communist China. Although heavy handed, fans will enjoy the connecting of the dots starting in Springfield through Caton to London and Chernobyl as David and Helen know that greed is the capitalist engine of choice with the unprotected as its fuel in a way that would make Mendele proud.

Harriet Klausner

The sequel to "Bleedout", really a super read right up there with the best writers.
Worth the price, the bookseller was great along with Amazon.

This is a fun read. This fast paced, well written, international thriller, moves quickly as diabolical plots thicken and come undone. Although a thriller, there is humor and a love story to boot. All this makes for a deliciously enjoyable romp of a tale. The author continues with characters introduced in her prior David Marion thriller, Bleedout. However, this novel stands alone. Her characters are quirky and interesting and ultimately get one thinking about the quality of human nature. This novel finds Helen Freyl, a physicist, missing David Marion, erroneously believing him murdered. However, David managed to escape and observes from the sidelines. When he learns that Helen, who has gone to London to work for Follaton Medical Foundation, a charity seeking to find a cure for radiation sickness, is in real trouble, he immediately drops his disguise and joins her there. Helen's wealthy grandmother had bought her a farm many years back. That farm has bees with a unique venom. Someone wants to buy the farm for a ridiculously high price and, if not the farm, then the rights to this patented venom. Will Helen sell? She wants to know why her bees are so valuable. She wants to know why she was given a valuable fellowship to work at Follation by Illinois megacorporation UCAI. She wants to know what Follaton is doing in Belarus. All of these questions lead to real danger for her and for David as they try to protect themselves and uncover the truth behind Follaton, UCAI and even the bees on Helen's farm. All becomes clear in the end leaving the reader well satisfied with having gone on this journey with Helen and David and the other characters that come to life in this book.