Rubbernecker

Starred review from August 10, 2015
British author Bauer's highly original mystery boasts two unusual protagonists. The first is Sam Galen, a man in a coma ("I'm asleep and I cannot tell you how hard I try to wake up"). The other is Patrick Fort, who has Asperger's syndrome. Patrick has trouble interacting with people, but thanks to a disability quota, he has been admitted as a medical student to Cardiff University in Wales. In an anatomy class, Patrick and four other students learn to dissect a cadaver (identified only by number) and discover the cause of death. Patrick risks everything to make the correct diagnosis, even when his efforts could not only get him expelled but also threaten his life. Bauer (Blacklands) brilliantly captures both the horror and helplessness of Sam's being mentally alive in an unresponsive body, as well as the mystification Patrick suffers in virtually all dealings with others. Even without the author's absorbing storytelling, this standalone deserves attention for sheer inventiveness. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company (U.K.).

Ever since he saw his father die, medical student Patrick Fort, who has Asperger's syndrome, has struggled to grasp how death shifts us instantly from "is" to "is not." While looking for answers to this mystery in his autopsy class, he stumbles across another: murder. Rather than adopting some affectation to convey Patrick's autism, narrator Andrew Wincott lets other characters' reactions to Patrick do it for him. Those exasperated, sad, confused, and sometimes manipulative voices not only say all that needs to be said, they also deftly achieve the effect of making Patrick the most grounded and cogent of the lot. With this simple, creative choice, Wincott ensures that right up to the last of many satisfying reveals, we rethink who is hero, who is victim, and who is villain. K.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine