Number 64- Oktober - Stephen Gallagher

This book has been waiting around in my TBR for several years. For obvious reasons I had to, at the very least, start reading it in October. I started on the 29th (playing catch up here on quite a scale) and finished on Monday this week - 3rd November.

I love that cover, but it has almost nothing to do with the story inside.

Jim Harper is a tutor to a spoilt rich girl. When she goes to a ski resort next to an experimental facility run by her family business, Jim tags along. He injures his arm and accidentally wanders into the facility where he's assaulted by a member of staff.  To try to save his life, they inject him with an experimental stimulant they're working on.  This apparently fails and they leave him for dead and try to cover up the incident.

He's not dead though and recovers with no memory of what happened. Unknown to him, the company is still watching him and the drug they gave him may have side effects they never expected.

There are some nice ideas hidden in this book.  However it takes forever to get to them. I wasn't particularly taken by his writing style. The prose is pedestrian in the extreme and very jump-cutty (if that's not an actual word I don't care, it describes how I felt about the writing). Too much of the action happens off screen and mentioned in passing. I don't think he achieved much of an atmosphere for most of the book, where some authors would have the pages dripping with paranoia. 

The ending of the book is rather excellent though. It more than makes up for the rest of the book. This is where pretty much all of the horror appears. If only the rest of the book had been as effective as the final couple of chapters, this would have been an easy 9/10 read. However, I struggle to award this more than 6.5 because of the slog to get through to those last pages.