Mindfield »

William Deverell is the author of Needles, Platinum Blues, and Trial of Passion.

A long-ago series of brainwashing and unorthodox psychiatric experiments are at the center of a conspiracy that eventually involves the CIA, FBI, mafia, and Montreal police force in this thrilling mystery. When bodies start turning up in an unexplained series of murders, Kellen O'Reilly—Montreal native and one-time participant in the psychiatric experiments in question—begins having flashbacks that may lead him to the identity of the murderer. With the help of the dynamic and sexy Sarah Paradis—the trial counsel in a class action lawsuit filed by victims of the experiments—Kellen must discover why he and others were brainwashed before he himself turns up as another corpse.

Publishers Weekly

In this uninspired thriller set in Montreal, Deverell (Mecca) combines blackmail and murder and bumbling yet vicious mobsters. Twenty-five years? ago Montreal cop Kellen O`Reilly was a subject in CIA-funded experiments performed by sadistic Dr. Satorias--``the Mengele of the mind''--whose brainwashing technique involved LSD. Although O'Reilly is crippled by horrific flashbacks, he initially refuses to join in a suit brought against Satorias by Sarah Paradis, a gorgeous leftist lawyer. Love and death threats eventually persuade him to join forces. O'Reilly and his partner Raolo generate some heat as wisecracking maverick cops, but the action scenes are standard cinematic car chase and shoot-'em-up fare and the romance between Sarah and O'Reilly is more convenient than explicable. An overworked Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory is dredged up for the unsurprising finale. (Nov.)