The Runaway Clock

by Bill Carrigan


Formats

Softcover
$13.50
Softcover
$13.50

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 9/17/2001

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 5x8
Page Count : 236
ISBN : 9780759633544

About the Book

The year is 2025; the scene, a research laboratory in Baltimore, Md., where scientists study the aging process. Dr. George Buell, department head, has met a violent death. He and his much younger wife, Jill, collected children with progeria, premature old age, to study and treat. Jill and Dr. Ray Lindsay (who tells the story) are lovers.

Flash back a year. Ray and Buell agree to join forces, and Ray brings his research team to Buell’s lab. He and Jill fall in love. He isolates Progerin, a substance that seems to cause the children’s affliction. Buell discovers, but doesn’t disclose, the budding affair.

Shift to Tarpon Springs, Fl., where a retired scientist has donated his estate for studies on oldsters. Of special interest here is spring water that protects small animals from x-ray. Theorizing that the water might also retard aging, Buell wants to test it on the children. To check for toxicity, Buell and Ray begin to drink the water themselves.

Ray is deeply troubled about the love affair and Buell’s growing erratic activities. He finds himself aging rapidly . . . As the year unfolds suspense and horror build to a climax in Buell’s death and a clarifying return to the opening scene.


About the Author

Bill Carrigan was a science writer and editor with the National Institutes of Health and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Now retired, he lives in Sarasota, Florida, and writes fiction.

Other novels by Bill Carrigan at 1st Books Library: Manic and Seldom Go By.