Bob Reiss The Side Effect

The Side Effect

Bob Reiss

Dell, August 2006, $6.99, 480 pp.

ISBN 0440243083

When Chairman Dwyer of Lenox Pharmaceuticals apparently commits suicide leaving a note behind saying "I'm lonely", his security chief Mike Acela doesn't believe it. From the moment he sees the body, he senses that his mentor was murdered or forced to commit suicide. He finds a list and on it there is a note to give Mike a disk which Mikee never received. He turns the list over to the police and FBI agent Eisner believes he and Dwyer were traitors to the U.S. and intends to prove it.

Meanwhile, Mike's private investigation team finds information on a drug HR 190 that the company is trying to synthesize. The new CEO of the company fired much on the old guard including Mike but he and a loyal cadre of friends keep digging to find a link between a series of resignations in Washington culminating in the president leaving office and the new drug. Their replacements are all ultra right wing. These are fundamentalist heavy hitters in office now who could change the face of world politics unless Mike can figure out what the drug does, how to destroy it and expose the conspirators without getting killed in the process.

Conspiracy buffs will thoroughly enjoy, THE SIDE EFFECT, a thriller that shows just how ruthless some politicians and armed forces commanders can be to achieve their goals. The hero is caught in a whirlwind, traveling blindly down a road hoping to get answers that make sense. Mike is a patriot in the truest sense of the world who wants to destroy a cabal that threatens the very ideals America was founded on by its forefathers.

Harriet Klausner