Triggers

Someone is reading the President's mind!

On the eve of a secret military operation, an assassin's bullet strikes the US President. He's rushed to a Washington, DC, hospital, where surgeons struggle to save his life.

At the same hospital, Canadian neuroscientist Ranjip Singh is experimenting on Iraq war vet Kadeem Adams, using a device that he hopes will erase Kadeem's horrible memories, finally curing the soldier's posttraumatic stress disorder.

Suddenly a terrorist bomb explodes. In the operating room, the president suffers cardiac arrest. He has a near-death experience — but the memories that flash through his mind are not his own. Instead, he's reliving the life of Kadeem Adams, the veteran traumatized with PTSD by the very war the president had sent him to fight.

It quickly becomes clear that the electromagnetic pulse generated by the terrorist bomb amplified and scrambled Dr. Singh's equipment, allowing a random group of eight people to access one another's minds. And now one of those people can retrieve the president's memories — including classified information regarding the upcoming military mission, which, if revealed, could cost countless lives.

Dr. Singh and Secret Service Agent Susan Dawson race against time to figure out who has switched memories with whom, a complex task — particularly when many of those who can now read other people's memories have reasons to lie ...
#1 Locus Bestseller!Globe and Mail Bestseller!Maclean's Bestseller!
"Triggers is constantly gripping on the surface and seriously provocative deep down." —The Wall Street Journal

"A turbo-charged technothriller." —Publishers Weekly

"A tense race-against-the-clock adventure with a surprise ending." —Library Journal

"Sawyer expertly explores the personal as well as political consequences of his high-concept premise." —Financial Times

"Sawyer is at the height of his powers here: a mature storyteller sharing his worlds with us at his own easy stride. I couldn't put it down." —January Magazine (a "Best of the Year" pick)

"A rich and compelling narrative. Robert J. Sawyer is one of the best in the business, and Triggers is him at his finest." —The Maine Edge (Bangor, Maine)

"Engaging and full of fascinating ideas. Triggers uses a techno-thriller plot but the approach is more that of a philosophical inquiry." —Morning Star (UK)

"No one digs into a sci-fi thought experiment with quite the zest that Robert J. Sawyer does. Sawyer doesn't stint the thriller framework, but the story's real joy is the care he takes in exploring the details of the memory-sharing." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Despite the near-dystopian setting, Triggers is haunting in its optimism. It was a joy to read." [Five stars out of five.] —San Francisco Book Review

"It's a national security nightmare — someone has access to the secrets lodged in the brain of the most powerful man in the world. There's lots of fascinating stuff here about how human memory works, and Sawyer expertly explores the personal as well as political consequences of his high-concept premise." —Financial Time