In Harm's Way

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Breeze, a British research biologist turned full-time writer, debuts with a cracker-jack medical thriller centering around a 1952 government experiment aimed at determining how Britain might survive an atomic war. Medical researcher Tony Marchbank receives an urgent call from a colleague and reluctantly agrees to drive to the man's house. When he arrives there, however, he finds the man missing and research documents scattered throughout the living room. Within hours, the colleague turns up dead, a supposed suicide. But when Marchbank returns to the house, he discovers that all the papers have vanished-until they just as mysteriously reappear, subtly altered, days later. The ensuing investigation by Marchbank and his assistant uncovers a strange pattern of leukemia and cancer victims, all children, in an obscure northern English village-the key, it turns out, to unearthing a despicable government plot. Throughout this well-paced and understated tale, Marchbank's three-year-old marriage unravels, a turn of events that contributes to the near-destruction of the man. Though careful readers will foresee some of the revelations and relationships here, Breeze's tight focus on Marchbank and those around him results in a frighteningly believable first novel that presages well for his career.(July)

William Beatty

When the head of an English medical research establishment seemingly commits suicide, most of his colleagues accept it, although none can come up with a motive. Then, when his second in command, epidemiologist Tony Marchbank, sets out to complete his research, he encounters a growing number of mysteries, beginning with the cancer deaths of several children in a north England village not far from a nuclear energy installation. Helped by an attractive female assistant who, it develops, knows a great deal about Tony and his wife, Tony gradually uncovers a trail of shocking military and governmental inhumanity and cover-ups. A female journalist for the London "News" also helps Tony; a secretary of state manipulates from the shadows; and a scientist's widow supplies some clues for which she pays a terrible price. Fascinating and well told, chemist Breeze's first novel demonstrates that you don't have to serve up the usual gratuitous sex and violence to create a gripping thriller.