Judgment Day

by Patrick Reinken

Lawyer Jon Patchett and his assistant Anne Matheson know the stakes are high when they investigate the death of a Weber BioTech employee: An AIDS vaccine is up for FDA approval, and Weber doesn’t want anything to interfere with the process. But there is serious cause for concern, and Weber is hiding a terrible truth. Jon and Anne discover that Weber’s research included an experiment in human testing that went disastrously amok. And the pharmaceutical company is quietly eliminating the victims to protect the secret.      As the lies surrounding the vaccine begin to unravel, Jon and Anne stumble into a race against time as Weber executives, frantic to remove all the evidence of their deadly research, close in for the kill....

Genres: Fiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published July 19, 1996

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book had an intriguing premise and the story was good. Wouldn't necessarily consider it a must-read though. Because the author told the story from the legal perspective instead of the scientific perspective, it didn't pull me in quite as strongly, as my knowledge of the legal field is less developed than my knowledge of science and medicine. A lot of the book was spent with the main character reviewing documents that his law firm had drawn up for the biotech company that was one of their clients, but for me, the main purpose of these documents and their importance in the investigation was lost due to my unfamiliarity. That said, it didn't make the story hard to follow, just a bit tedious at points. It also took a while for the actual nature of the biotech company's shady dealings to be revealed, which makes sense as the author wouldn't want the reader to necessarily know before the law firm does, but the science perspective would have gone into all those juicy details and put the legal case in the background.
I'd consider reading another book by this author, presuming it still had a somewhat scientific theme like this one did.

[Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0 stars

Originally reviewed on The StoryGraph

slow start, but got more interesting as the mystery developed. Lots of seemingly random vignettes that add to the story well if you have the patience to get there. I personally was hoping for more focus on the medical research side of things, but the story is being told from the investigating lawyer’s perspective and did that well. The resolution of the plot was complete - all loose ends seemed to be tied up, but it wasn’t completely satisfying. I don’t feel like I wasted my time reading this, but also won’t ever revisit.

[Cassie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yikes, this was a very slow and confusing start. If you could skip to about page 100, the rest of the story had some good suspense. The Barber was an odd addition that felt like it could have been its own spinoff. The concept of a HIV vaccine sounds plausible, but the storyline was a bit of a mess.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Judgment Day is a pretty run-of-the-mill thriller novel, with a nefarious big company doing bad things to the little people for money. The concept--an AIDS vaccine that's actually more virulent than HIV itself--is pretty gripping for this day and age, but unfortunately, Reinken chooses to focus more on the relatively unlikeable characters and their individual redemptions (or just desserts, for the bad guys) rather than really exploring the global ramifications of what something like this would do to the world we live in. The vaccine becomes the big bad but it could have been anything and not affected the story in any way. A good airplane book, but nothing life changing here.

[Toesnorth's mom]

medical suspense, good