Review: The Cure by Douglas E. Richards
Positives
Negatives
Sometimes I think we’re alone.
Sometimes I think we’re not.
Either way it’s staggering.
-Arthur C. Clarke
I picked this book up on a whim and was immediately engrossed. When I have some downtime, I like to hang out at the local bricks-and-mortar bookstore, walking through the aisles and finding treasures on the shelves. That is how I found The Cure by Douglas E. Richards. I sat in a cozy, overstuffed chair on the second floor and sipped my first pumpkin spice latte of the season while I was introduced to Erin Palmer. I hadn’t even made it through the first chapter before I knew this was a book I had to finish. The psychological-technological-science-fiction thriller seemed like a niche I hadn’t yet uncovered.
As a child, Erin Palmer witnessed the gruesome deaths of her parents and younger sister at the hands of a psychopath. Now, as a grad student, she has spent years studying variations in the brains of psychopaths. When her research catches the attention of a neuroscientist, Hugh Raborn, they team up to find a cure for psychopathy. Far from FDA approval for human trials, Erin secretly performs tests on prison inmates, periodically video conferencing with Raborn. After several years of testing, and three inmate deaths, she may have actually uncovered the genetic cure. When Erin shows up unexpectedly at Raborn’s office to surprise him with the winning genetic resequencing, she discovers that the person she had spent years working with wasn’t the neuroscientist Hugh Raborn at all. So who had she broken the law for? And what was his agenda? When she meets Kyle Hansen a whole new universe opens up. Meanwhile, someone by the name of Steve Fuller has suddenly become interested in Erin and her work: interested in the “secretly bugging her phone and tracking her with armed goons” kind of way.
Who are the good guys? Erin and Kyle are forced to run for their lives, but every move they make gets them into more and more trouble. Richards has an amazing talent for keeping the reader guessing.
Rachel Storey
