Smokescreen: A Novel of Medical Intrigue

by Vernon L. Avila

Smokescreen traces the rise of Eloy Cordova Santiago from humble beginnings in a village on the shores of Lake Maracaibo, where he apprentices with the village medicine man and learns the ways of the curandero and the secrets of the spirits of the forest, to world renown as a brilliant neuroscientist.
His pathway is charted by the death of his father from Huntington's and the vow he takes to find a cure for the disease. Then a tragic accident brings him together with Karen Williams, a researcher from the United States coincidentally investigating the genetics of Huntington's. With her encouragement, and through his own talent, determination and ambition, Eloy gains the formal scientific training in Venezuela and Puerto Rico that leads to a breakthrough discovery and lands him a position at the National Institutes of Health.
But the journey is harrowing and dangerous. Eloy faces challenge after challenge in a world where scientific ambition and love conflict, where drug lords dispense escape and pain, where powerful politicians play God, and where greed and power determine who lives and who dies. Yet none of these challenges is as great as his race against time to use his scientific knowledge to save the United States from a cynical, manipulative conspiracy that puts the President of the United States in mortal danger.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2000

Reviews

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping, fast paced medical thriller with national and world-wide consequences hanging in the balance (well, fictional consequences). Held my interest throughout, excellent book.