The Episode

Synopsis

Only yesterday, crusading reporter Daniel Cooper was a free man--free to ignore the limits of conventional journalism, free from the random attacks of epilepsy that anti-convulsant drugs had successfully suppressed for more than two decades. But today there's a dead man on Daniel's doorstep, a mysterious .45 in his apartment, and two detectives on his back. And his only hope for the future lies in reclaiming the 24 hours he has lost to "the episode." It seemed that nothing could stop Daniel Cooper and lawyer Calhoun Bledsoe from ferreting out the corruption and brutality behind New York City's biggest real estate deals--until a violent epileptic seizure stole one critical day of Daniel's life. Struggling back to consciousness, he opened his eyes to a nightmare he could neither recall nor forget: Billy Rourke, the goon hired by a Manhattan real estate baron to "clean out" buildings slated for gentrification, was a stone-cold corpse on Daniel's doorstep. Calhoun Bledsoe, Rourke's longtime nemesis and Daniel's muckraking sidekick, was gone without a trace. And the gun in Daniel's apartment was just the right size to have put deadly holes in Rourke's body. Could Daniel possibly have killed this man he hated so in a fit of epileptic rage--and not remember it? As far as the New York Police Department is concerned, the verdict is already in--even as Daniel and his feisty girlfriend, Kate, seek out the suddenly elusive Bledsoe. Did the cryptic phone call Kate received from Bledsoe hold the key to Rourke's murder? Their search leads to a drug-infested basement in Brooklyn's threatening Bedford-Stuyvesant, where another deadly surprise awaits. Against a background of poisonous duplicity and rampant greed, Daniel relentlessly pursues the answers to these questions, desperate to unravel what he suspects is a criminal conspiracy. All the while, he must deal with the crushing emotional blow of his first seizure in twenty-five years. Kate stands by him in his medical trauma, but even she finally begins to suspect he may have murdered Billy Rourke without realizing it. And the breathless, down-to-the-wire climax in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine does nothing to allay her fears. THE EPISODE is a taut, spellbinding detective story. But it is also a powerful medical thriller that probes deeply the still widely misunderstood realities of epilepsy, a malady the author has suffered from all his adult life. A brilliant fiction debut by a top-flight writer.

Copyright:

1986

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

314 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780453005173

Publisher:

New American Library

Date of Addition:

07/29/21

Copyrighted By:

Richard Pollak

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Literature and Fiction, Mystery and Thrillers

Submitted By:

Evan Reese

Proofread By:

Lori C.

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.