Krishna
We have reviewed some of this author’s books earlier. See Congo and Next for just two examples.
Let us dive into the story. The story is simplistic enough and thus this review is likely to be short!
Dr Morris and Dr Ellis are awaiting a special patient in the hospital to the emergency ward. He is Benson.
Benson is unique in that he sustained a brain injury and due to scarring, he seemed to enter a state of fugue when he had no memory of what he did for a while. He also became violent. Medications did not work but a mild electric shock seemed to help. When the fugue state becomes longer and he gets more violent, they decide to operate him and place an electronic device that would sense the oncoming of the fugue state and pre-emptively provide a mild shock, thereby hopefully eliminating the issue for the rest of his life.
However, the machine goes spectacularly wrong. Benson seems to ‘want’ these shocks in a perverse way. While they are figuring out the next episode time, Benson has disappeared. They finally figure that he had slipped out of the room when he heard the guard leave for a cigarette (illegal) and went calmly out wearing an employee’s attire from the janitor’s room where it was kept. When the police come calling they do not tell them the whole story, much to Ross’s chagrin. When the next predicted attack of 6:30 AM does not occur they breathe a collective sign of relief. Until the phone rings and they discover a brutal murder of a dancer by Benson.
While the entire police force is searching for him, he enters the flat of Ross voluntarily. After being afraid a bit, she engages him in a calm conversation.
He then suffocates her, and when she fainted, leaves without killing her. He then lets her know that he is planning to reprogram the computer – because ‘he has to fix it himself and he does not trust the doctors including Ross. When they learn that the call came from inside the hospital, they are all alarmed.
There is an exhilarating finish to the novel, where there is a confrontation that is action packed and exciting.
The author keeps to the promise we have known him for, in that he imagines scientific possibilities and spins a tense yarn using these. He does this here too.
I thought, being from an IT background, that his explanations of computers are simplistic and too pat. But then I remembered that all his stories have this characteristic too, just that I was not close enough to see through them.
Nevertheless, an interesting novel and we would give it a 6/10
— Krishna