Panacea

June 27, 2016
This suspenseful paranormal thriller from Wilson (Fear City) introduces evil CIA agent Nelson Fife and the religious extremists of the 536 Brotherhood, a monastic order whose members dedicate their lives to wiping out a miracle cure and its guardians. Dr. Laura Fanning, a New York City medical examiner and mother of a deathly ill child, stumbles on evidence of this miracle potion while conducting several routine autopsies. Her scientific mind refuses to believe in its power, but she agrees to travel practically around the world in search of this cure at the behest of an incredibly rich, terminally ill mystery man. She takes along his equally mysterious aide, Rick Hayden, as her bodyguard. Laura and Rick track the cure's origins via a series of tattoos on the guardians' corpses. Tension mounts as Nelson hacks Laura's phone and sets in motion a plan to make her unaware of the danger mounting at home, so she can lead him to the guardians of the cure. At times Wilson tries too hard to educate the reader instead of moving the story forward, but for fans of mysterious ancient sects and miraculous possibilities, it's an entertaining tale, underlined by a clear battle between good and evil. Agent: Al Zuckerman, Writers House.

May 1, 2016
When Suffolk County medical examiner Laura Fanning completes post-mortems on two men in perfect condition, she soon learns that their perfect health traces back to a secret originating in the year 536 at an apostate Benedictine monastery isolated in the Pyrenees Mountains. Evidence appears suggesting the men have taken a panacea, an ancient remedy for any illness or injury. Despite her scientific skepticism, Fanning is hired by mega-billionaire Clayton Stahlman, who's dying from lung disease, to seek ikhar, the panacea. Stahlman assigns Rick Hayden, supposedly an ex-SEAL, as her bodyguard, and the unlikely pair races from New York to Quintana Roo, then the Negev, the Pyrenees, and finally the Orkneys. Hayden's intriguing back story includes a secret link to CIA agent Nelson Fife, a member of the clandestine 536 Brotherhood, an esoteric monastic order. The Brotherhood believes mankind's expulsion from the Garden of Eden means human beings deserve a lifetime of "pain and grief and suffering and death," and thus ikhar comes from the Serpent, the devil, and so Fife's willing to use the agency's assets to thwart Fanning's quest. Wilson's (Fear City, 2014, etc.) narrative flies at jet speed, even when Hayden philosophically muses over "a vast, cool, and unsympathetic" intelligence manipulating humankind. The dialogue is seamless, natural, and eventually ratchets up the tension when Fanning develops a personal reason for finding the potion. Wilson's complex, entertaining, smart story also includes comet-induced climate change, Gaulish Druids, German nihilists, Christianity's Aryan offshoot, and commentary on how a panacea would influence social order. Fanning and Hayden escape Hellfire missiles, dispose of villains in a manner most gruesome, and return home to find the billionaire ready to hire them for a sequel. An intelligent, intriguing, fast-moving blend of science fiction and thriller.

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June 1, 2016
Wilson, author of the Repairman Jack novels, begins a new series. Laura Hanning, a medical examiner in New York, autopsying the remains of a badly burned man, is surprised to discover that the man apparently died before his house burned down and that he was remarkably (almost impossibly) healthy. Soon she learns that, at the hospital where the dead man worked, people have been inexplicably restored to perfect health. Meanwhile, CIA agent Nelson Fife is hot on the trail of a secret group known as the panaceans, who, Fife believes, possess a miraculous cure to all diseases; also searching for the group is a wealthy man desperate to be cured of the illness that will soon kill him. Imaginative and well paced, with a good mixture of action and fantasy, this debut offers a welcome change from the Repairman Jack books, which had grown a little tired (though fans will be interested to know that the new series takes place in the same Secret History of the World cycle).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)