Bloodstream
Simon & Schuster Audio, $18
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REVIEW BY LUCINDA DYER
Be afraid. Be very afraid. Bloodstream is a deliciously frightening story guaranteed to send chills up your spine -- an added bonus this time of year. Newly widowed Dr. Claire Elliot has left a successful career in Baltimore to move with her son, Noah, to the small resort town of Tranquility, Maine. After the death of his father, Noah had fallen in with bad company, and Claire decided that a move would make for a fresh start for both of them. Noah, however, is unhappy in school, struggling to fit in among students who have known each other since birth. And Claire is beginning to have her own doubts about the move as it becomes apparent that the locals are more than a little suspicious of a big city doctor. Tranquility, it seems, is anything but for Claire and her son. Then the violence begins. One of Claire's teenage patients opens fire in his high school biology class. His parents blame Claire for taking him off a medication prescribed by his former physician, but Claire is certain that something else led the boy to commit such a terrible and unexpected act. When she tries to order a blood test for drugs, she is abruptly dismissed as the boy's doctor. As the violence escalates, Claire desperately searches for a cause. Amid wild rumors of satanic cults and local witches, she considers everything from illegal drugs to the small blue mushrooms that grow in the woods and are sometimes eaten by Tranquility's teens. And what about the strange phosphorescent green glow that Claire and the local sheriff see coming from a nearby lake? Then Claire discovers what many of the locals already know -- this isn't the first time that seemingly "normal" teenagers have committed unspeakable acts of violence in Tranquility. There were murders in 1887 and again almost 50 years ago. Warren Emerson, one of the murderous teens from five decades ago, still lives in Tranquility. Cast out from the community, he lives in virtual isolation. Could Warren, wonders Claire, hold the key to what's happening to the children? Gerritsen, whose two previous medical thrillers, Harvest and Life Support terrorized their way onto bestseller lists, looks to have done it again -- Bloodstream is best read with the lights on and the doors securely locked. Lucinda Dyer is a publicist and freelance writer in Franklin, Tennessee.
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