Book Review: The Blood Notes of Peter Mallow

The Blood Notes of Peter Mallow by Paul Boor, M.D.

SterlingHouse Publisher, Fiction, $14.95
(214p) ISBN 1-56315-403-4

Although this is a work of fiction, American citizens may feel a lot less secure about the forces protecting them from potentially deadly diseases after they read this dark, intriguing thriller. The plot concerns Dr. Peter Mallow, a university scientist working to understand a virulent bird flu. When his brilliant research student, Jorge, becomes unhinged during the routine autopsy of a drowning victim, Dr. Mallow decides to record his feelings and observations about the troubled young man in a lab notebook in hopes of finding out what’s really going on. (The “notes” in this “notebook” comprise the novel.) Slowly and inexorably, as we read Mallow’s notes, we learn more about Jorge’s mysterious obsession with drowning and Mallow’s attempts to expose a deadly cover-up within the auto industry. In the meantime, the threat of a global health disaster hangs over the two scientists and the university where they work: Just how well contained is that deadly virus? Just how trustworthy are the researchers?

All this makes for a clever premise for a novel, and Dr. Boor, a world-renowned, Harvard-trained pathologist and scientist, has the background and technical lingo to pull it off successfully. The language and situations, bordering on science fiction, always ring true, and readers will feel as if they are taking a surreptitious peek at secret documents. The pace is stately, maybe a little too much so. But suspense builds steadily throughout, and the authenticity of the language and science will hold the attention of every reader with the fatalism of a terrible traffic accident unfolding in slow motion. A real pressure-cooker of a suspense novel with a realistic thesis that is, frighteningly, all too possible.