DEAD HEAD, an over-the-top terroristic thriller, has our hero, brain surgeon Russell Lawton, forced to participate in a bizarre and dangerous medical experiment. Palestinian thugs have kidnapped Lawton’s young daughter and threaten to bury her alive and kill him if he doesn’t help.
But what they want seems totally insane. One of their colleagues has been critically injured and will certainly die in a couple of weeks. This man is an integral part of their terrorist plot, and he must fulfill his mission. The only way to do this is to physically separate his head from the injured body and keep the brain alive long enough to finish the task.
Ohhhhhkaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy. But author Allen Wyler is also a medical doctor and he goes to great lengths to make the medical processes and details credible. He even provides the historical basis for the novel: patent number 4,666,425, issued for enabling the removal of an animal head and to keep the blood flowing through the brain. You can look it up via the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office if you don’t believe him.
The terrorists have Lawton in a tremendous bind: If he refuses to help or even if he fails, both he and his daughter will die. Success is the only option. So Lawton begins to help, and to look for a way out of his impossible situation.
Wyler is good at depicting brutish violence and the reader quickly develops the appropriate rage at the terrorists and sympathy for Lawton. The medical environment seems realistic enough, and while dialogue ranges between medical practice and expressions of outrage and dominance, the behaviors of the characters hold together quite well. The terrorists may be a tiny bit cartoonish, as we never really understand their motives or get into their heads. But this wall of non-understanding works, because it reinforces just how grim the predicament is for Lawton. He is a man of science forced to confront people who cannot be reasoned with.
So, even though the premise sounds a bit wacky, Wyler makes it tense and believable. If you like medical settings and suspense, you’ll definitely like DEAD HEAD. –Mark Rose
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- Head Game
- Different Kinds of Dead and Other Tales
- The Book of the Dead
- Cover unearthed for Preston/Child’s BOOK OF THE DEAD
- Dead Wrong
