Julian Solo

by Shelly Reuben

10th Anniversary Edition of JULIAN SOLO. In 1817, Mary Shelley looked beneath life's surface. What she saw were passionate people with unquenchable thirsts for knowledge, and tragic characters caught in the swirling momentum of a scientist who felt compelled to create. Mary Shelley gave us Dr. Frankenstein. Now another Shelly peers into life's hidden depths to question and to probe. JULIAN SOLO is a novel about a brilliant scientist who died...and yet lives, and who, having experienced this impossible transition, seeks to recreate the circumstances again and again. Why cannot we use death to prolong life? Julian Solo asks. Why cannot death be made to serve, instead of to obliterate? Why cannot a man reach, with his hands and his heart, into that abyss from which there is no return, to defy death, overcome death, defeat death -- for the sake of the woman he loves? Julian Solo is a man of integrity, an honorable scientist, a medical man on whom we can rely. He has given us his solemn promise that we can trust him. His purpose is to conquer death and his journey is into the void. He wants us to come with him. This is a book no reader will forget.

232 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1988

About the author

Shelly Reuben's first novel, Julian Solo, was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar Award and by the Libertarian Futurist Society for a Prometheus. Her crime novel, Origin and Cause, was nominated by the Maltese Falcon Society of Japan for a Falcon; and her adult fable, The Man with the Glass Heart, was a Freedom Book Club selection. Her fiction has been published by Scribner, Harper, Harcourt, and is also available through Blackstone Audio Books.

Her new book, Dabbling in Crime, November 2016, is a collection of short fiction originally published in The Forensic Examiner and The Evening Sun.

Shelly Reuben is a licensed private detective, and the years that she spend investigating fire and arson inspired many of her stories and books.

Reviews

[Morgan Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was hard to comprehend at first but once I got into it and understood what was going on, I enjoyed it. This talented woman writes columns for our local newspaper!

[Margaret Fernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julian Solo unfolds through a series of letters, diary entries, memorandum, and the like. The story is about Julian Solo, a brilliant scientist and a man in love. The main narrator (through journal entries) is Solo’s stepson, Mathew Wylie, who tells his tale (when we meet him, he has been arrested for murder) with youthful passion and romantic turns of phrase. This is a love story, a science-fiction tale, suspense novel, and a plunge into a word filled with larger-than-life people in intriguing locals (Roosevelt Island; The Steinway Piano Showroom; A Hans and Gretel House overlooking the New York Harbor). If you like epistolary novels, you will love this book. Highly recommended.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are looking for an old-fashioned Gothic suspense novel with a dash of science fiction (people can’t really die and come back to life again, can they?) this is the book for you. The language is elegant. The moral question of the limits of science is tantalizing, and you won’t be able to read it without casting it in your mind as a movie. The book races from the first to the last page. I loved it!