Aids cure older book ( )

Un scientifique cherche un remède pour guérir le sida mais ça ne fonctionne pas et il assassine des patients atteints du sida et trompe les résultats de tests ( )

Somewhat apropos of 2020 if you substitute COVID for AIDS. Though the publication date of this book is 2011, it was actually written 20 years ago. What if there were a cure ? Drama ensues. it was a little over the top when our hero is kidnapped and ends up in a Thai whorehouse via a cargo airplane. Characters seem real enough and we get to know them. Fine book. ( )

If this was the first ever book of Harlan Coben that I came to read I would never even touch any of his books again. Yes, It's one of his earliest books and one should have patience. But the thing is: I have loads of patience for Harlan Coben. Since reading "the Stranger" I have worked myself through almost all his standalone stories and I love them (guilty pleasure, of course) but this piece just screams for en editor. At least someone to point out the basic difference between aids and HIV. ( )

I opened this book to the foreword from the author, warning the reader that this is an early book of his, not re-written and packaged as a new novel (“I hate when authors do that” he states). It sounded familiar - right down to the final paragraph conceding that there is a “risk taking” about this novel that he isn’t sure he still has the capacity for. I had read it all before. Unbelievable! I had gone and bought a book I had already read!! Except that I hadn’t. None of the story was familiar. Turns out there are several ancient books his publisher has put out with the exact same foreword, with the title of the book cut-and-pasted in in the appropriate place.

I hate when authors do that.

But over to the story. This is the sort of fast-moving twisting-turning fiction we have come to expect from Harlan Coben, and considering it’s the work of a “naive lad” in his twenties it’s not half bad. Harking back to the early days of the AIDS crisis, it surrounds an apparent cure for the disease and a murderer apparently targeting those who have been successfully treated. The trademark jocularity is sparse but used effectively (the character Michael is asked whether anything unusual has appeared in his urine, and reports that “there was a Datsun Hatchback in there this morning”. Bravo).

As with this type of mystery novel it’s probably a case of picking the least likely person to have “dunnit” and you may well get it right (though I didn’t). Guessing the “why” is more tricky, and the explanation section that every such book has to go through tied my brain in knots, but I understood enough. More of the same please, but would it kill you to write a new foreword? ( )