The Experiment

August 30, 2019 by JBronder

The Experiment

by Robin Lamont

on Tour August 1-31, 2019

Synopsis:

Jude Brannock is a brash and single-minded female protagonist for today’s readers who believe that nature and animals deserve our respect and must be protected. In The Experiment, author Robin Lamont brings these forward-looking themes to her newest suspense novel.

Jude is an investigator for an animal protection organization. When the young man she has trained for an undercover job suddenly vanishes after a tantalizing text that he’s “on to something,” Jude rushes to the quiet, farming community of Half Moon, only to discover that her trainee might have perpetrated an elaborate con job on her. Determined to get to the truth, she unearths a biopharmaceutical company’s deadly secret, and in doing so, comes up against dark secrets of her own.

Book Details:
Genre: Suspense Published by: Grayling Press Publication Date: May 15th 2019 Number of Pages: 288 ISBN: 0985848588 (ISBN13: 9780985848583) Series: The Kinship Series Purchase Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Read an excerpt:

John Harbolt wasn’t easily shaken. With over forty years of medicine under his belt, there was hardly an injury, disease, or fatality he hadn’t seen, and he’d treated just about everyone in the small town of Half Moon at some time or other. But on that late summer day, young Tori Lacey showed him something that baffled him. Her symptoms were inexplicable and downright scary. She was his first patient of the day, a young woman who had battled her weight for years. In between the earaches and the sore throats, Harbolt had gently counseled her about diet and exercise. He hoped she wasn’t here to ask him about diet pills again, because as far as he was concerned, they were off the table. After removing her file from the plastic holder bolted to the outside of the examination room, he adjusted his wire rim glasses and straightened his lab coat. The younger doctors often wore khakis and a short-sleeved shirt at work, and maybe it put the kids more at ease. But Dr. Harbolt stuck with a freshly starched white coat, believing that it made his patients feel more confident in his abilities. And confidence in one’s doctor was important to the healing process. “Tori Ann Lacey,” he announced jovially as he shambled into the room. “Hi, Dr. Harbolt.” The morose girl before him sat on the table. She had taken off her running shoes but left her sweatshirt and shorts on. “I haven’t seen you for a while,” he said, noting with some surprise that she had slimmed considerably, her round face now leaner and more mature. “How is college life treating you?” “Ok, I guess.” Her voice and posture belied this. “What brings you here today, my dear.” “I don’t really know. But we thought you should look at these.” She pushed back the sleeve of her sweatshirt and held out her arm for inspection. There were several bruises that vandalized the translucent skin of her inner arm. Dr. Harbolt held her wrist and peering over his glasses, looked closely at the red and purple marks. He pressed lightly on one of them. “Does that hurt?” She shook her head no. “What happened?” “That’s the thing. Nothing happened. They just appeared.” She showed him another set of bruises on her other arm. “Did you fall?” “No.” “Knocked into something?” “No,” she exclaimed, as though he didn’t believe her. “My mom thinks it’s my diet. That I should be eating meat.” “And you’re not?” “No. I needed to lose five more pounds for the track team, which I was having a hard time doing, so I switched over to a raw food diet. And it really helped because I made my goal.” “And you were selected for the team?” She nodded, anxiously chewing on a nail. “Congratulations. You getting enough protein?” he asked, studying the bruising and letting her answer drift past him. This wasn’t because of her diet. She rambled for a moment about nuts and spinach, then peeled off her socks and lifted her bare feet to the end of the examination table. “And then yesterday after a run, I found this,” she said. “I didn’t even show my mom ’cause she’d freak out.” Dr. Harbolt caught his breath. It looked as though someone had taken a baseball bat to the soles of the girl’s feet. Fiery maroon blotches screamed out some kind of violence. Three of her toes had turned a dark purple. “Good Lord!” he blurted out. “What happened to you?” “Nothing! I’m telling you nothing happened,” wailed Tori. “They just … showed up.” *** Excerpt from The Experiment by Robin Lamont. Copyright © 2019 by Robin Lamont. Reproduced with permission from Robin Lamont. All rights reserved.

Author Bio:

Before becoming a novelist, Robin was a popular Broadway actress and singer, turned private investigator, and then New York prosecutor. She draws on these diverse careers for her work, infusing suspenseful plots with character-driven drama. Robin’s prior work has garnered awards and recognition, including Suspense Magazine’s Best of the Indies and a Gold Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards for her novel If Thy Right Hand. Her book The Chain, which introduced Jude Brannock to readers, was a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Finalist. Her screen adaptation of the book, Six Seconds, is currently under option.

Catch Up With Our Author On: thekinshipseries.com, Goodreads, BookBub, Twitter, & Facebook!

My Review

5 Stars

Jude Brannock is an investigative reporter for the animal protection group The Kinship. They are not as dramatic as other big name groups and prefer to work in the shadows. Jude is worried about the rookie reporter, Tim Mains was to go undercover as a vet tech for Amaethon Industries, a company using mice, rats, and dogs to test their new medicine. They have had a couple violations in the past and Tim was supposed to get evidence to get some serious attention on the company. Be he has disappeared.

Jude is very worried about Tim and goes to Vermont to find him. There she is surprised to learn that Tim was caught giving a sixteen year old girl heroine. But this doesn’t sound like Tim to Jude and she keeps digging. It seems there are a lot more secrets that Amaethon has been keeping from people and Jude is going to expose them, if they don’t stop her first.

This is the first book in the Kinship series that I have read and I instantly fell in love with it in the first chapter. Jude cares for animals, more than humans and is determined to stop their abuse. Against her common sense she falls for Tim and becomes very concerned about his disappearance. But she has her own problems that she is ignoring that may come to bit her at the wrong time.

As an animal lover I wanted to read this book but was hesitant because I knew I would have a hard time with the testing and treatment of animals. But this part was well written and portrayed. I loved the mystery and how this was so much bigger than just some testing of a new drug.

This book could have easily been a standalone novel instead of the third book in the series. I loved this book and can’t wait to read the first to books in the series to see what I missed. It’s definitely one that I recommend checking out.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. I voluntarily chose to read and post an honest review.