Syndrome

by Thomas Hoover

When a group of people, all suffering from life-threatening illness, unwittingly become part of a secret experiment that reverses the aging process, they find their lives plunged into madness where only one woman, who knows the disturbing truth, can save them. Original.

Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Fiction, Ebooks, Science Fiction, Medical, Crime

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Thomas Hoover has a doctorate in oceanography and served as senior vice president of an architect-engineering firm in New York, where he has lived for several decades. His vices include being an avid sailor and a recognized collector of the classical music of India. He began his writing career with two classic non-fiction books on Far Eastern art and religion and then moved into fiction writing with two critically acclaimed novels about English sailors in the early Seventeenth century.

Reviews

[Louise Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alexa Hampton runs her own interior design firm in New York's Soho, but now a heart mishap threatens her life. He black sheep younger brother insists she goes to a New Jersey clinic owned by his eccentric boss for stem cell experiments. There she and her long-ago lover, a medical reporter, discover a bizarre experiment to reverse the aging process.

This is quite an intriguing book to read. It's full of events and surprises. The pace is slow in the first half, but it then gets quicker after that. The story focuses on what might happen in the future and highlights both the risks and rewards reversing the aging process could have. Some of the characters were interesting.

#KindleFreeBook

[Elli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uuuuuuuughhhh. This had so much potential! And it started out so well, but took a huge nosedive in the second half. The author requires you to suspend disbelief a little too much. I guess I was able to go along with the CFO of a company just happened to be the brother of an interior designer who just happened to be the old flame of a reporter who just happened to be the son of the CEO of the company. I think. But I really draw the line at believing an Amex card is going to open a pass-card type lock, and that injecting some stem cells is going to give you super human strength. I'm glad this was free because if I just read the very beginning I'd probably pay money for this, but then by the time I got to the end I'd be wanting a refund. The product placement was another thing. Dated and annoying. The typos! Good god, can we get a proofreader in the house?

I know other reviews compare this author to Robin Cook. Um, no. If you're looking for Robin Cook, get a Robin Cook book. This is probably similar to what Robin Cook could have written in about 6th grade.

[Roberto · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some may complain about the science in the book and they would be right. I will complain about something else: the plot and the writing.

Not only is the plot fueled by coincidence in a scale that would make anyone notice (examples? the journalist is the son of the bad guy billionaire *and* the old flame of the architect/experimental subject who is the sister of the bad guys's CFO kind of coincidences).

There is also the random detailed description of things that don't matter in the least, but also make no sense. Here's the decription of Alan the doorman:

"When Ally and Knickers walked into her lobby, Alan, the morning doorman, was there, just arrived, tuning
his blond acoustic guitar.
Watching over her condominium building was his day job, but writing a musical for Off Broadway (about
Billy the Kid) was his dream. He was a tall, gaunt guy with a mane of red hair he kept tied back in a ponytail
while he was in uniform and on duty. Everybody in the building was rooting for him to get his show mounted,
and he routinely declared that he and his partner were this close to getting backers. "We're gonna have the
next Rent, so you'd better invest now" was how he put it. Alan had the good cheer of a perpetual optimist and
he needed it, given the odds he was up against."

Then he pats the dog and exchanges two phrases with the protagonist.

I marvel at the idea of a doorman that's allowed to play guitar on the lobby on working hours. With this introduction you may wonder what role Alan plays in the plot. Well, let me quote the only other mention of Alan in the whole book. It comes very near the end.

"The condominium no longer had a doorman. In hopes of trimming costs, the condo board had sent out a secret
ballot on the subject. By a narrow margin the owners had voted to dispense with that particular frill. Although
she missed Alan and his early morning optimism about his Off-Broadway hopes, she realized the economy
was probably timely. "

I rest my case. The plot is just lazy, the science is contrived, and the writing lame. Not a good book.

[Candace · Rating 1 out of 5]

What made this book so unappealing I stopped halfway through? Firstly, I just didn't connect with the characters. In part, that's because they felt like characters, not real people. It was as if I was reading a play, and they were playing a part that was not who they truly were, because each seemed so flat, and without dimension. If I can't connect with the characters, there really is no redeeming the book for me, but I will give a little bit of feedback on the story anyway.
As I've said in other reviews, the genre/premise for this is perfectly in alignment with the kind of book I usually read. I love a good Michael Crichton thriller, and this promised to be in that family. Crichton, however, sucks you into the story right from the first pages and this feels like a labor one must muddle through to get to the good parts. The writing is slow, and it's as though the author had a thesaurus next to him so he could use the same meanings over and over with different words, yet failed. I have never read the word "contrite" so many times on the same page before! According to the author, Grant appears contrite in the exchanges with this sister, despite being described as a narcissistic, pompous, self-righteous liar in every other instance! NO! Also, I love (sarcasm) when an author chooses to solve every problem of commitment and restriction by making the characters richer than the average person so as not to be tied down by anything mundane such as a regular work schedule, bills, and personal appointments for various things.
So bad. Soooo bad.

[Tabitha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why do I keep attacking these overlong "hard" (sorta) sci-fi and/or medical thriller books, when I don't even want to admit I've read half of what I actually have. So much potential, crumbled into wasted time.
I have a weak spot for a medical thriller. But man-o-man, this was not a good book. It was written like a first-draft hash-out of what might have become an action movie staring Nic Cage as Stone Aimes. No I'm not making up that name, Tommy Hoover beat me too it. I'm pretty sure any editor that came in contact with it must have said "HOW many pages? Who has time for THAT?" Lots of silly grammar and punctuation errors. Many randomly blank pages where formatting took a coffee break.
As far as the plot and story of the book... well. They existed. Sorta. So that's something.
The plot centers around a bad reaction to a fountain of youth style stem-cell injection. The Syndrome, as it is called, (yep all caps and all the sinister mustaches you could ask for) is left really vague for the first half of the book. Why, you ask? I don't know either, since we've obviously both seen the Darkwing Duck episode where Binkie and Herb discover what happens when the anti-aging process gets out of control. Dear Mr. Hoover and whomever else it concerns, the secret isn't a secret. Please get on with the story. Which, as it happens amounted to "Bad People do Bad Things to various Good People. Good People overcome Bad Things and then wait to see if some Bad Things will happen to the Bad People."
One thing I really did enjoy about this bit of writing were the weird, stupid details that WERE included. Such as the characters preferred brands of computers, OS or Gods help us-- web browsers. There was an instance of some one logging onto AOL and pulling up information on the Google that really made me grin.
Full Disclosure... I have to admit the first third of the book or so was charming in its own way and made me want to deal with its stupidity for some popcorn reading. The second two-thirds tried to shank my literacy.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a free kindle download so my hopes weren't necessarily that high, but I still didn't like this book. I started reading this book three months ago and at some point stopped reading it and never started again so it's probably safe to say I'm just not going to finish reading it.

My main issue with this book is that the science is just so terrible. Hoover didn't change things enough to make the the science futuristic or alien so I couldn't even read it like science fiction; I did try really hard though. I tried to pretend that when he was talking about stem cells that he was actually talking about some mysterious future research, but I couldn't do it. I just graduated college with a degree that allowed me to spend quite a bit of time studying stem cells, and reading the science in this book just hurt it was so bad. No one with knowledge of stem cells even in 2003 should have looked at this book and thought it was good.

Maybe readers who don't know anything (or know very little) about stem cells can read this book and enjoy it. If you do know anything about stem cells though I would recommend steering clear.

[Jeff Hatzenbuehler · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't believe that such writing is actually published. The writing was dry and child-like with technical terms to try to show off. Don't waste your time on this one.

[Nicola Gelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately I didn't enjoy this book. It just had too much going on for me. I like my stories to have a clear storyline.

I hope other people enjoy Syndrome. I'm not going to say it was a bad book. I think the author just needed to choose his main plotline and run with that. Instead we had the science fiction, the romance and the crime story all vying for attention. Was the main storyline about a serious heart condition? Was it about a Mother's love for her daughter?

However the plotline was an interesting story. Imagine being able to stop your body aging and more importantly regenerate damaged parts, outsmarting Mother Nature. The romance aspect wasn't up to much.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tells the story of scientists who are using genetics to 'cure' alzheimers. The main miracle worker has had success in creating a gene which can regenerate cells in organs no longer able to work to their full capacity and has had some success with a procedure to 'cosmetically enhance' people who wish to look younger. I can fully understand the want to improve people's standard of life when they have an incurable disease, but..........

[Marian Greco · Rating 5 out of 5]

hoovered is right!

open this tale and be prepared for everything in your air space to become engulfed by the mandate to keep reading. man's immortality, the dream of the ages. and one dutch physician who's on the brink of crack ing the golden egg. just enough science to sell the story. and the pay off? if you can afford it? the story ends better, more positively, than you might expect....

[Evelyn M Blackburn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this book because it was free

Interesting subject but I found it to be too easy to figure out where the story was going. I also found the numerous typos and grammatical errors to be distracting.

[Marsha Koenig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prize Worthy!

I have been a science fiction can since I was 13. This book ranks among the best I've ever read. It's sci fi and it's not. It is prophecy and worth reading more than once to understand the. nuances.

[Keith McDonagh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it

I always enjoy fiction with its roots in fact. It makes you wonder if ur can our well happen. This was a great story, I totally enjoyed it. If you like medical fiction, you should read this one!

[Barbara Rozycki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Page turning medical mytery

Very well written and very timely with the use of stem cells, probably need some medical background to follow plot.

[Lonnie Eckman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad

Book was decent. Some areas more gripping and kept you reading. Beginning took a while to tie all the parts together, but then book got intriguing.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick read, always a good sign!

[judith l marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling.

I enjoyed the book. At times i was afraid to turn the page...if it becomes a real procedure,it should be monitored very closely so as not to be abused.

[Gareth Williams]

Superb Read

An excellent read which slowly but surely drags the reader in.
If this is the standard of Hoover's writing I can't wait to read more!

[Cheryl Luba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started off slow but then picked up and finished quickly. Interesting read.

[dennis williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Syndrome

Grips you firmly from the start. You cannot put it down until you find out what the end finishes like.

[Darel Krieger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good read, gets a little long in the middle but the end is definitely an attention getter.

[Laura McMahon · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved the audiobook version

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Karl van der Vliet is an undisputed genius who's medical research results in the ability to work miracles. He realizes a way to use adult stem cells that when injected into unhealthy organs, they can rebuild, regenerate and basically fix themselves. This process is the proverbial fountain of youth that can keep diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and cirrhosis at bay indefinitely. Enter Alexa, she suffered an illness as a child that resulted in scar tissue in her ventricle which has been getting worse over the years. Her mother has been diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer's and her brother Grant, the black sheep in the family, is pushing Alexa to join the clinical trials which could heal them both.

While I enjoyed this book immensely, something really bothers me about it. Ally and her mother have disowned Ally's brother Grant after their father, Arthur, has an accident with a hunting rifle that was no accident. Arthur becomes depressed after his failure to meet the mortgage on the business and feels the only way to dig his family out of this financial hole is to take his own life in an accidental manner so they can receive his life insurance. Granted Arthur wouldn't have been in the situation if he hadn't have mortgaged the business to loan money to his son, we all need to take responsibility for our own actions. Arthur could have refused to help Grant, and the fact that Ally managed to turn the company around and save the business after the insurance company ruled her father's death a suicide and refused to pay up shows that Arthur didn't need to resort to such desperate measures. Yes, Grant is a fairly unsavory character but maybe he would have been a bit more caring towards his remaining family if they hadn't wrongly blamed him for his father's suicide.

There is a dark and murky side to this tale and an age old moral dilemma. Just because the technology is possible to do something, does not necessarily mean that it should be done. The theory was raised in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and Dr. Karl van der Vliet ponders basically the same thing. Unfortunately when humans can wield power that only God should have, they end up with a God complex and start believing that they can do anything that they desire, no matter the consequences to "the little people".

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first full-length eBook I've read and I enjoyed it. The issues I had were more with the eBook format than the book itself, such as some of the text appearing 2-3 font sizes smaller than the other printing on the page and odd line breaks in the middle of the line. Also, the book needed a proofreader, as I noted many spelling, grammar, and perhaps AutoCorrect errors, but they didn't affect the book too much.
Plotwise, it was very fast moving and could probably be finished in an afternoon or two. The lead character is an interior designer with a life-threatening heart condition, and loads of turmoil in her family, including a lover who mysteriously vanished, a father whose 'accidental' death was precipitated by his losing his savings trying to bail out her brother from yet another business deal gone bad, and a mother rapidly losing her mind to Alzheimer's. When Alexa's brother, Seth, returns to New York City offering a new stem cell treatment to both her and her mother, Alexa is skeptical that it's another money-sucking scheme he's fallen into, but in seeing her mother's decline is convinced to take to at least give it a try.
Meanwhile, the two principles behind the treatment, Dr. Vee and billionare Winston Barlett, need Alexa's participation in order to hopefully reverse the effects of a secondary procedure both Barlett and his girlfriend underwent that went horribly wrong. While the stem cell procedure has shown to reverse the effects of debilitating diseases and heal damaged tissue, the secondary procedure or Beta, was intended to be the secret to eternal youthfulness, by introducing an enzyme that would restore any dead or aging tissue immediately, maintaining the patient at their current physical age. However, the procedure has shown to restore all the old tissues in Barlett's girlfriend at an accelerated pace, causing the Syndrome, actually causing her to regress to a younger physical and mental age every day.
While I thought the book took a little while to link Alexa to the stem cell procedures, once it did, the action picked up and I found it hard to put down.
The eBook mentioned that the rest of Hoover's work could be downloaded for free, so I'll have to look for them, as I'm curious to see if Alexa's story continues on.

[Matt Schiariti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first time reading Thomas Hoover...I've found that overall I enjoyed his writing and I think I'll be revisiting him again in the future.

Syndrome is a medical thriller based on cutting edge stem cell research. I admit that I don't have a full working subject of the novel so I can't really comment on the veracity. I will say that, as a work of fiction, this isn't that unbelievable. One of the strong points of Hoover's writing is that while it revolves around a heavily scientific subject, one doesn't need a degree in medicine to actually understand it. I wouldn't call it 'dumbed down'. I would say that there's a good balance between background information of the subject, explanation and its use in the plot.

Alexa Hampton is widowed with a degenerative heart condition who's mother is suffering from early onset alzheimers disease. When her estranged CFO brother suddenly pops into her life after four years promising what could be a miracle cure in the form of a radical clinical trial, will she take the bait? Will she have a choice or is she to be an unwilling lab experiment? Little does she know that her brother's got an ulterior motive.

The story is much more complex than that. An eccentric and wealthy medical baron that's funding a certified Dutch genius in the field of stem cell research looking for the fountain of youth. A lover from Alexa's past turned reporter looking to get to the bottom of what's going on at a medical research facility secluded in a remote part of northern New Jersey. Patient records for the clinical trials being doctored. All in all it's pretty intriguing. I don't want to give up too much of the plot so that's a skeleton of an outline at best.

The problem, for me, is the ending. It falls apart. Not from a story telling perspective. No, there are no 'fast ones' thrown in, no last minute character entries. It's just the way the protagonists react to what went on after all is said and done that didn't make much sense to me.

I considered giving it a 3.5 star (although amazon won't allow you to do that!) but it kept me entertained and I enjoyed the characters.

[Mike Owens · Rating 3 out of 5]

A medical thriller based on the concept of increasing longevity and curing disease by repairing damaged DNA with enzyme infusions. The concept is certainly mainstream, and stem cell infusions have been in use for years now. I did have some issues with this work, however.
Stylistic issues: too much backstory. The entire first chapter, with the exception of Ally taking her dog for a walk is backstory, Ally's aortic valve disease, Mom's Alzheimer's, Dad's suicide, husband's death, etc. This doesn't "hook" this reader very effectively. There are other sections where extensive backstory intrudes on current action.
Content issues: At one point, early in the book, note is made of a stem cell harvest from the ankle of a 73-year old woman. This probably isn't possible. Bone marrow in the adult is concentrated in the sternum and pelvic bones. It is either withdrawn from the pelvis by aspiration, or harvested from peripheral blood by a process known as apheresis.
Then there's the problem of needing an ABO compatible donor (the protagonist) for antibody production. Monoclonal antibody science has progressed to the point that there are virtual factories for production, that do not require human sources. Mice do quite nicely.
Perhaps these are not fatal flaws (it is fiction, after all) but they're close.

[Kay (Brigidsmomma) Compton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The characters are mostly well-developed, and believable, and so is the science behind the story. There is just enough truth to the genetics and research that makes this just at the edge of science fiction, but very close to reality to be able to suspend belief for me. I would say that within a few decades, this will be proven to be true, just as an early short story about surrogate motherhood by one of the leading women in sci-fi turned out to be true a few decades after it was written.

This work also brings into question the age old dilemma that faces much of cutting edge science, but especially regenerative medicine; how much is too much and when do we start becoming demigods playing with humanity for our own interests? I think it is a question we need to keep in our minds as we study and research the boundaries of medical science. Restorative medicine is good, but is regenerative medicine even necessary? This would be an excellent book for discussion, even among young adults (i.e. in a high school biology class), who are after all, the generation who will have to deal with these very situations in real time.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a very good and enjoyable medical thriller.
It took a little while to get really drawn in for me, but then it picked up and was very exciting. My one character complaint is that the main character was described as a strong independent woman but seemed to be easily bullied into things. Though I suppose the plot could not have progressed if this were not so.
The concept being explored in the book was thought provoking and interesting, even if the science wasn't perfectly accurate. I figure the exact medical aspects aren't really point of the book anyways.
I haven't decided exactly how I feel about the end... there were aspects I liked and others that I didn't.
Overall, very good and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys Robin Cook.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very, Very creative read. Sometimes a little predictable, but for everything you figure out you are surprised by an unexpected turn!
The syndrome has to do with regenerative medicine gone horribly right and horribly wrong. A series of experiments led by a genius doctor who has a pretty decent moral compass but is easily influenced by his very off-balance financier. After curing many individuals with "regenerative medicine and stem cell" they push the boundaries too far. Eventually leading to coercion of additional patients, and illegal means. Nothing is to risky for the bad-guys.
I highly recommend this read!

[K.R. Bankston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read!! definitely a rollercoaster ride with very memorable characters. I hated the supposed victim/herionne from start to finish. Not sure I was supposed too, but she was just way to overthe top extra for me. I loved Stone, the reporter and even the villains Winston Bartlett and Dr Van...the supporting cast was also enjoyable and i liked the flow of the story. I'm thinking perhaps there is a slight bias however to paint stem cell research as some dark sinister force of evil, when it's actually a very reasonable catalyst for change and healing in the entire human populus. Other than that deferring tone, the book itself was worthy of the time to read it.