The Lazarus Vector: A Novel

by Erica Obey

When Professor Clare Malley, a medievalist teaching at a Catholic university in New York City, is asked to discover why sixteen-year-old Jonas Crosswell did not die in a drug-related shoot-out at a neighborhood church, the last thing she expects is a modern-day miracle. But how else to explain how the boy survived multiple gunshot wounds? Was it a miracle performed by the mysterious Father Enoch? Or did St. Lazarus himself intervene? And what does Jonas's experience have to do with Sean, the troubled heir to a pharmaceutical fortune who vanished after he was also supposedly miraculously cured? When Clare tries to discover whether there is a connection between Jonas and Sean, she uncovers an all-too-real, unholy conspiracy to use neighborhood drug dealers as unknowing guinea pigs. Sean may be the only one who can answer her questions and the only one who can truly touch her heart."

284 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2016

About the author

There are three places you can find Erica when she’s not writing: on a hiking trail, in her garden, or at the back of the pack in her local road race. Her favorite kind of vacation is backpacking across Dartmoor or among the hills of Wales in order to find new and exciting legends about Druids, fairy folk and unsolved mysteries to inspire her own writing. After she graduated from Yale University, this interest in folkore and legend led her to an M.A. in Creative Writing from City College of New York and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York, where she published articles and a book about female folklorists of the nineteenth century before she decided she’d rather be writing the stories herself.

Along with their macaw Fasolt and a rotating assortment of cats, she and her husband divide their time between New York City and Woodstock, where they spend far too much time gardening – growing native woodland plants, roses, and old-fashioned cottage favorites, while fighting the chipmunks for the fruits of their kitchen garden – and losing. She is passionately committed to finding new and exciting recipes and eating with the seasons, although it’s abundantly clear that if she and her husband actually have to live off the land, they’d die. Check out some pictures on her website, beginning on St. David’s Day (Mar.1.)

As for her supremely untalented running, well, it gives her a chance to relax and think about her novels, even if, when she’s training for a marathon, it literally takes all day – as does walking the 2 miles back and forth from her apartment in Manhattan to Fordham University, where she teaches writing.

Reviews

[Eileen Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exciting mystery story of a miracle or was it?
Great read.
Very highly recommended.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Amphorae Publishing via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.

[Patricia Bello · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the copy.

I liked the concept of the book. Resurrection, religion and conspiracy. Science vs faith. A boy with autism suddenly without autism and gained more. And gangs and drugs. All the makings of an interesting book.

The story, however, leaves a lot of questions. What is the lazarus vector? How does the dead priest factor in to Sean's "powers" that he did not share with Claire by the way? What happened to the rest of the drugs that were made? Surely it's not just those vials that Jonas found.

It's a decent book. Still a bit far from the more popular books of similar theme but decent. More details please next time.

[John Rennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a very easy read and quite fun, but I can't recommend it. It feels like a young adult version of a Dan Brown book. The characters are stereotypical, the plot is rather formulaic and the writing style isn't very elegant. It's not a bad book, but with so many better books screaming for your attention I don't think reading this is a good way to use your time.

[Erica Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an unusual book. It was like Michael Crichton and Dan Brown tried to have a book baby. I did enjoy it. I was kind of hoping for more supernatural/miraculous explanations to some of what was going on but it turned out to be just plain old greed, government overstep and abuses of human rights. I really liked the whole cast of characters and it really wasn't just Clare and Sean/Michael's story; everyone else's drama was pulled right in.

I also learned a lot with this book so now I have a bunch of new words to confuse my friends and family, like Angelophany and Simony. I love how a character will just use one of them in a sentence and everyone else just knows what it means. And I now I know the story of Abelard and Heloise. What is worse, having your balls chopped off, being force to burn your own manuscript (which you probably don't have a copy of because you wrote it on animal skin most likely), or being told by a man to go live in a convent for the rest of your life for no reason?