Skeptic : A Novel

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Bright, clean, square, tight, unmarked copy. Sharp corners. Not a book club edition. Not price clipped (24.95). No chips or tears. No remainder mark. No owner's name or bookplate. Author's first novel, a medical thriller exploring a molecular biological basis for ghosts. From School Library Journal: "A techno-medical thriller of the genre made famous by Michael Crichton and Robin Cook, this imaginative story is nevertheless quite original. Physician Mike Ballantine witnesses the horrible bomb blast that kills his best friend, the governor of Massachusetts. Having lost his wife in a commuter plane crash two years before, Mike is ready to believe that he has succumbed to post-traumatic stress disorder when he hallucinates a horse wandering through the halls of Metro Hospital shortly after the blast. What he doesn't realize is that one of his graduate students, working in his neglected virology lab in Metro's basement, has made a scientific discovery of momentous importance: ghosts do exist. They result from infection by pieces of benign viruses (viroles) set free from the cells of a traumatically deceased person. A few susceptible people who are exposed to the trauma site can inhale viroles carrying genetic pieces of memory, thought, and visions from the dead that will be incorporated into their own mind. They will then 'see' memories originally recorded in the mind of the departed. Of course, nefarious villains, surreptitiously aware of this groundbreaking study, will stop at nothing to get the completed research from Ballantine's lab. The body count piles up and the race is on. The science is feasible, the plot mostly plausible, and the action engrossing." . First Printing of the First Edition. Hardcover. Fine condition/Fine dust jacket. 8vo. 322pp . Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.