Gravity - Softcover

Gerritsen, Tess

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007432429 ISBN 13: 9780007432424

Publisher: Harper, 2011

Synopsis

Top Ten bestselling author Tess Gerritsen delivers a thoroughly menacing new thriller. A brilliantly compulsive page-turner from the author of The Surgeon.

Dr Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has been training for the mission of a lifetime: to study living organisms in space. Jack McCallum, Emma s estranged husband, has shared her dream of space travel, but a medical condition has grounded him. Now he must watch from the sidelines...

The mission aboard the space station turns into a nightmare when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control and infects the crew with agonising and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the deadly virus, while back home Jack and NASA work against the clock to bring her home. But there will be no rescue, as the astronauts are left stranded in orbit where they are dying one by one...

About this title

Review:

Tess Gerritsen used to be a doctor, so it comes as no great surprise that the medical parts of her latest thriller are very convincing, even if most of the action happens in a place where few doctors have ever practised--outer space.

Dr. Emma Watson and five other hand-picked astronauts are about to take part in the trip of a lifetime--studying living creatures in space. But an alien life form, found in the deepest crevices of the ocean floor is accidentally brought aboard the shuttle Atlantis. This mutated alien life form makes the creatures in Aliens look like backyard pets.

Soon the crew are suffering severe stomach pains, violent convulsions and eyes so bloodshot that a gallon of Optrex wouldn't help. Gerritsen brilliantly describes the difficulties of treating sick people inside a space module, and how the lack of gravity affects the process of taking blood and inserting a nasal tube. Dr. Watson does her best, but her colleagues die off one by one and the people at NASA don't want to risk bringing the platform back to Earth. Only Emma's husband, a doctor/astronaut, refuses to give up on her. As we read along, eyes popping out of their sockets, all that's missing is one of those bland NASA voices saying, "Houston, we have a problem--we're being attacked by tiny little creatures that are part human, part frog and part mouse."

Here are some other examples of Gerritsen's controlled medical horrors:Bloodstream, Harvest, and Life Support. --Dick Adler

Review:

Praise for The Surgeon:
‘If you like your crime medicine strong, this will keep you gripped' Mail on Sunday

'Authentic, convincing' Sunday Times

Praise for The Apprentice:
'Goes head-to-head with Nicci French and Karin Slaughter to scare the pants off you... A classic page-turner, full of melodrama’ Daily Mirror

‘Compulsive’ Irish Times

Praise for Gerritsen:
‘Tess Gerritsen is an automatic must-read in my house. If you’ve never read Gerritsen, figure in the price of electricity when you buy your first novel by her ‘cause baby, you are going to be up all night. She is better than Palmer, better than Cook... Yes, even better than Crichton’ Stephen King

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0007432429
• ISBN 13: 9780007432424
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400