Was It A Rat I Saw
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
This psychological thriller involves split brain research, animal rights, and a love quadrangle. It was originally published in hardcover by Bantam-Doubleday-Dell.
Neuropsychologist Clare Austen conducts research on the leading edge of reality. She has been intending to cease her experiments with Tommy Dabrowski before she becomes too emotionally involved with this appealing but married rock musician. Then personal considerations are swept aside by a high-voltage chain of terrifying events, which begins when Clare's mentor - the eminent Dr. Stanford Colton - is murdered in his university office. The only person to encounter the killer is Clare's most problematic experimental subject. But Tommy is a split-brain patient: only half his brain can still communicate to the outside world - and it's the other half that's a witness to murder. Clare's academic work now takes on a sharp urgency. Only by cracking Tommy's neural codes can she unlock the deadly secret trapped in the silent half of his brain.
As fresh crimes slash through the research community, the usually cautious Clare plunges into the investigation, despite threats to her life and the chief detective's severe warnings against interference in his case. Plagued by turbulent memories and unnerving suspicions, Clare must adapt her esoteric experiments to life-or-death stakes, in the wild hope of extracting a clue to the killer's elusive identity. Before she and Tommy are through, they discover great horror on that edge of reality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a highly original debut, first novelist Perry explores what happens when the left brain doesn't know what the right brain is doing. Dr. Clare Austen, a neurologist at Pasadena University, and prize research subject Tommy Dabrowski, a rock musician who underwent split brain surgery for epilepsy, collide in a darkened hallway with a man who has just killed Clare's mentor. Tommy grapples with the killer with his left arm, which is in the domain of his right brain. Unfortunately, Tommy's right brain can't communicate the information it gathered to the left brain, which controls language. More campus murders occur, requiring armed guards for Clare and Tommy until she can figure out how to access the knowledge trapped in Tommy's memory. Marathon lab experiments and close escapes from death lead to romance, to the chagrin of Tommy's New Age wife and Clare's stuffy lover. Objecting to their amateur sleuthing, the Pasadena police move the pair to the top of the suspect list, while Clare and Tommy investigate mean-spirited academics, grad students and even their own lovers. Antivivisectionists receive a nice plug and Perry, despite the questionable caper behind the killings, gets full marks for a neat premise, on the whole lucidly developed, and for well sustained suspense.
