Review: THE PANIC ZONE by Rick Mofina

[Larry W. Chavis]

THE PANIC ZONE by Rick Mofina
Mira Books, July, 2010
Tall Mass-Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7783-2794-3
$9.99/$11.99 CAN.

When Emma Lane's family picnic ends in a horrendous car crash, she is told her husband and infant son both died in the wreckage. Then why does she remember someone taking little Tyler from his car seat just before the wreck explodes into flames?

Jack Gannon is sent from New York to Rio De Janeiro to help cover a bombing that claimed the lives of two of his colleagues, a bombing blamed on the drug wars. Why, then, does it seem to have international ties?

A cruise-ship passenger dies a gruesome death from an unknown cause, causing certain top scientists to fear that some old research may have come back to haunt them.

And what ties these disparate events together? That is the question that Rick Mofina answers in his latest thriller, THE PANIC ZONE, a book takes the standard world-in-danger device of the genre to a higher level, at times leaving the reader breathless at its implications.
Beginning with the apparently random and unconnected events above, Mofina carefully builds the framework of a premise that, while a bit outlandish, becomes disturbingly plausible in his hands. The problems around which the plot revolves are real and have been discussed in the scientific and political communities for years, and recent history provides sufficient examples of human and biological experimentation, eugenics and euthanasia, that even the premise of this book is not beyond the pale of human evil. If the book has a flaw, it may be in making things slightly too easy for the master criminal, and too easy for the reporter and mother who uncover the plot. Still, there are plenty of chills and thrills to make THE PANIC ZONE a good summer read. Look for it.

Copyright ©2009 Larry W. Chavis
DISCLOSURE
I have a material connection because I received a review copy that I can keep for consideration in preparing to write this content. I was not expected to return this item after my review.