The Syndrome » (Unabridged, 10 cassettes, 15 hrs.)

John Case is the bestselling author of The Genesis Code, The First Horseman, The Syndrome, The Eighth Day, and The Murder Artist.

"[It] is one of the few science-mysteries I have read that is impeccable in plot, immaculate in story resolution, and moves with high skill from locale to locale and from suspense to suspense. What a very good, virtuoso read."

-Norman Mailer on The Genesis Code

A promising research fellow for a venerable think tank in Zurich is forced into a grisly experiment...A seductive young woman coolly sharpshoots an old man in a wheelchair as he basks in the late afternoon sun...A psychologist who helps patients confront past trauma battles his own silent demons...In THE SYNDROME, John Case combines these intriguing elements into a pulse-pounding, mind-twisting new thriller.

Dr. Jeff Duran suffers from severe panic attacks when he ventures too far outside his home office. And he is inexplicably haunted by mysterious memories, and phrases of a foreign language he never learned. Then, after a patient tormented by "recovered" memories commits suicide - and her half-sister, Adrienne Cope, blames Duran - his life spirals out of control.

Suddenly targeted by unknown assassins, he and Adrienne must run for their very lives. Forced to trust each other, they must now work together to unlock the reason why one or both of them is marked for death. For beneath the intrigue lies a dark conspiracy that stretches halfway around the world - and a sinister plot that could change the course of history.

A relentlessly paced thriller in which nothing is what it seems, no one can be trusted, and nothing is secure - especially one's own memories - THE SYNDROME is a chillingly, brilliantly conceived novel from a proven master of suspense.

Publishers Weekly

The always intriguing Case (The Genesis Code; The First Horseman) poses another troubling question for the ages in his latest biospeculative thriller. Just what happened to the U.S. government's secret mind-control experiments of the 1960s? In this diverting fictional juggernaut, a shadowy private enterprise, the Prudhomme Clinic, took over where the government left off. It is now kidnapping people, wiping their memories clean and turning them into assassins who target international leaders whom the Prudhomme believes are destabilizing world order. The whole operation, however, is jeopardized when one recreated human, Jeff Duran, manages to break the spell and start questioning who he is, and more importantly, who he was before a computer chip was implanted in his brain. He teams up in his quest with Adrienne Cope, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who has been baffled by the suicide of her sister, who, unbeknownst to Adrienne, was one of the Prudhomme's most skilled killers. Soon after the two begin poking around, they find their lives are in peril. They begin a frantic search for information, dodging attempts on their lives and making one bone-chilling discovery after another. They ultimately find themselves rushing off to Switzerland not only to confront the Prudhomme's leader, but to save the life of Nelson Mandela, who has been targeted for assassination. Explanations of the history and techniques of mind-control experiments as well as the psychology of amnesia add a realistic overlay to what otherwise might have been a fairly formulaic thriller. Case, revealed here for the first time to be the husband-and-wife writing team of Jim and Carolyn Hougan of Virginia, shows the sort of sure-handed storytelling that made their first two books such hot sellers. National ad campaign; author appearances in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. (May 1) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.