Mesmerized
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Synopsis
● "Magnificent fiction.... Impossible to put down." –BookPage
● "A high-concept, hard-charging thriller. Mesmerized will keep you just that." –Wall Street Journal
Mesmerized explodes into action in the first few pages with the near death of a rising star in the Washington legal profession, Beth Convey, who is given back her life with an emergency heart transplant. To her dismay, she's the recipient of more than just a second chance at life when her new heart becomes a source of frightening dreams and inexplicable behaviors. Pursuing the discovery that her donor was a former KGB agent who took asylum in the United States, she stumbles into the cross hairs of an ex-KGB general plotting a terrorist attack to restore Russia to its former Cold War status. The broad scope of his plan and the depth of infiltration reaches into the highest levels of both American and Russian political and financial institutions.
Simultaneously, Jeff Hammond, a reporter for the Washington Post, has been coming closer to uncovering the true activities of General Alexei Berianov and his compatriots — a belief he's followed doggedly for the past 10 years — and inevitably he finds his own investigation entangled with that of Beth Convey. Terminated from the ranks of the FBI, Hammond is under suspicion as a mole by the very people he once considered his friends and cohorts. As the evidence piles up against him, and the overlapping circles of undercover operations begin to erupt in a series of murders, Beth finds herself trapped in the dangerous complexities of international espionage.
With both their lives in jeopardy from Russian and American conspirators, Beth and Jeff form an uneasy alliance while trying to sort out just whom they can trust.
An interesting twist to the usual espionage suspense is the intriguing true-life medical theory that Lynds introduces through her character Beth Convey. Following the heart transplant, Beth finds she's experiencing what appear to be memories and emotions transferred from her unwitting KGB donor, which engage her in a struggle for control of her thoughts and actions. Detailed descriptions of the theoretical capabilities of the human heart to embody characteristics that were once believed to be the sole domain of the brain are fluidly integrated with the other elements of the plot. Lynds follows up on this very real phenomenon in her in her Author's Note at the end of the book, with references to publications that can offer readers even more insight. Whether readers accept the premise as having substance in reality, there's no question that it provides a fascinating substory.
Gayle Lynds's diverse credentials and uncanny sense of the undercurrents in the counterintelligence community lend a heightened reality to a storyline that already paralleled recent events at its publication. American content to believe the Cold War has become ancient history will find her fictional account of the rumors that persist regarding the KGB and the FBI a chilling reminder that the average citizen rarely knows what's currently transpiring in the shadowy recesses of our government agencies. MESMERIZED is definitely this summer's hottest espionage thriller, one that's going to result in a couple of long, suspense-filled nights for Lynds's readers. — Reviewed by Ann Bruns © 2001, Bookreporter.com
● "A high-concept, hard-charging thriller. Mesmerized will keep you just that." –Wall Street Journal
Mesmerized explodes into action in the first few pages with the near death of a rising star in the Washington legal profession, Beth Convey, who is given back her life with an emergency heart transplant. To her dismay, she's the recipient of more than just a second chance at life when her new heart becomes a source of frightening dreams and inexplicable behaviors. Pursuing the discovery that her donor was a former KGB agent who took asylum in the United States, she stumbles into the cross hairs of an ex-KGB general plotting a terrorist attack to restore Russia to its former Cold War status. The broad scope of his plan and the depth of infiltration reaches into the highest levels of both American and Russian political and financial institutions.
Simultaneously, Jeff Hammond, a reporter for the Washington Post, has been coming closer to uncovering the true activities of General Alexei Berianov and his compatriots — a belief he's followed doggedly for the past 10 years — and inevitably he finds his own investigation entangled with that of Beth Convey. Terminated from the ranks of the FBI, Hammond is under suspicion as a mole by the very people he once considered his friends and cohorts. As the evidence piles up against him, and the overlapping circles of undercover operations begin to erupt in a series of murders, Beth finds herself trapped in the dangerous complexities of international espionage.
With both their lives in jeopardy from Russian and American conspirators, Beth and Jeff form an uneasy alliance while trying to sort out just whom they can trust.
An interesting twist to the usual espionage suspense is the intriguing true-life medical theory that Lynds introduces through her character Beth Convey. Following the heart transplant, Beth finds she's experiencing what appear to be memories and emotions transferred from her unwitting KGB donor, which engage her in a struggle for control of her thoughts and actions. Detailed descriptions of the theoretical capabilities of the human heart to embody characteristics that were once believed to be the sole domain of the brain are fluidly integrated with the other elements of the plot. Lynds follows up on this very real phenomenon in her in her Author's Note at the end of the book, with references to publications that can offer readers even more insight. Whether readers accept the premise as having substance in reality, there's no question that it provides a fascinating substory.
Gayle Lynds's diverse credentials and uncanny sense of the undercurrents in the counterintelligence community lend a heightened reality to a storyline that already paralleled recent events at its publication. American content to believe the Cold War has become ancient history will find her fictional account of the rumors that persist regarding the KGB and the FBI a chilling reminder that the average citizen rarely knows what's currently transpiring in the shadowy recesses of our government agencies. MESMERIZED is definitely this summer's hottest espionage thriller, one that's going to result in a couple of long, suspense-filled nights for Lynds's readers. — Reviewed by Ann Bruns © 2001, Bookreporter.com
Release date: March 8, 2018
Publisher: Canning Park Press
Print pages: 576
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