Blood Test

Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman is a former psychologist and this story centres around a medical saga that is interlaced with characters that have come straight out of a psychology text book.

Blood Test is set in America, the language is American but it is about people who could live anwhere. The story concerns the treatment of a young boy who could die from cancer at any moment; and what happens threads out from this central theme like a mind map or spidergram.

There are two complex medical men who are initially key to this story but essentially both of them disappear from the story having made their significant impression on the story: one dies and one is arrested.

There is a quasi religious sect woven into the story: in a small way to begin with; but it's always there. By the end of the story this sect is paramount and for the lustful, there's a sex scene!

The family of the young boy is a fascination, though; and the daughter most fascinating of all. The daugher is stunningly beautiful and a sexual marathon athlete whose wares seem to be free for anyone who finds her; and she is perhaps the most interesting psychological case of all. Kellerman shows us an attractive and sexually active woman not as something to worry about but to pity. I think we learn a lot from Kellerman simply by reading about this young lady. She is someone who has been abused beyond all telling yet she is someone who might be walking down your street at the moment. Abused and mentally disfigured, she behaves in the way she has been conditioned to behave: it is awful for her and for us that this woman really does exist, most notably, perhaps, in the world of drugs and of prostitution.

All's well with the world by the end of the book and we are left with a feeling of hope both for the young boy and for the young girl: these two have a very special relationship, too, as you will find when you read this book.

This is my first Kellerman and there are two more on the shelf waiting for me.

 

© Duncan Williamson
11 January 2003