I tried using Google today. I wanted to find the author of some half-remembered books that I enjoyed as a teenager. And amazingly enough I succeeded. It seems even I can successfully ask ill-defined questions of the internet and get a well-defined answer.
The author’s name is John Creasy, and I loved all his books, but the ones I was trying to remember were the Dr. Palfrey series. They were among my first “adult” borrowings from the local library when I was a kid. I couldn’t believe real grown-ups read the sort of stories I enjoyed, with science gone wild, governments failing to act, and Dr. Palfrey trying to pick up the pieces.
The half-memories were inspired by reading Pat Bertram’s A Spark of Heavenly Fire, a book that’s entirely too much fun for a middle-aged woman like me. How can a “patient representative,” of a certain age, be the main character, and how can she be so neat to know that I want to be just like her? But science has gone wild again, the government might even be the enemy, and young Greg, the investigative reporter, is burying despair in investigation while Kate picks up the pieces.
Along the way, poor Kate gets thrown up on, frequently, and puts her own life back together while healing the hurts of a world full of assorted strangers, plus Greg. Lots of people die, and Kate and Greg are determined to find out why, while the government quarantines the state, and the rich and famous throw their money around in their efforts to escape.
A Spark of Heavenly Fire is a good tale well-told. It’s got tons of fascinating information and great characters. It defies convention and the pigeon-holes of genre. And I love it. Thanks Pat. I hope you’re writing more.
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wild horses and shackles