Monday With Kaye: "The Trial" by Larry D. Thompson (Reviewed by Kaye George)

With all the medical stuff we have gone through the last several years, medical dramas and medical thrillers are a definite and automatic no go for this reader. If they are still on your reading radar Kaye George’s pick this week might be down your alley.

 

The Trial by Larry D. Thompson

This thriller exposes some lethal potential problems in the way pharmaceuticals are policed and approved. The reader needs to suspend a bit of disbelief to go along with the complete scenario, but, if you can do that, there are enough plot turns to keep you going here.

The relationship between attorney Luke Vaughan and his daughter creates a dilemma for the lawyer when he's caught between his love for his daughter and his budding love for the woman he knows could make him happy.

The first part of the novel felt compressed, maybe hurried, in getting to the legal portion of the plot, the actual trial that the first half led up to. In this section, there was some confusion about time, about what was backstory and what was unfolding. The whole scenario could have been avoided by the main character's shocking neglect to provide insurance coverage for his daughter. But, given that, most of the rest of the story was plausible.

This reviewer is familiar with the locales, which gave me a special interest in the book. Vaughan was born and raised in San Marcos and graduated from the University of Texas, the area where I've lived for the last six years.

After quitting his high-powered job because of the physical problems he is having, Vaughan moves back to his hometown and encounters a woman who had a crush on him in high school, Sue Ellen Taggert. They are both unmarried at the time and each has one child, and a relationship begins to develop. An interesting character, the motorcycle riding Professor Whizmo, enters their lives and, later, they're all glad he's around.

Vaughan's daughter's troubles begin with a drug trial which may cost her her life.

The trial threatens Vaughan's relationships with his daughter as well as with his new love, and also threatens their very lives as Vaughan races against time to expose the dirty dealings of an almost unbelievably corrupt drug company, which will stop at nothing to win, and a crooked FDA official, who is looking out for number one.

Reviewed by Kaye George, Author of A Patchwork of Stories for Suspense Magazine