What is Larry Karp reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Larry Karp, author of A Perilous Conception.

His entry begins:

My daughter claims I can't read for pleasure. She shakes her head at the way I go through a book slowly, thinking, considering, and reciting particularly apt lines aloud. I tell her, well, that is my pleasure. "Chacun à son goût."

I recently finished Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, by Elizabeth Stuckey-French. 77-year-old Marylou Ahearn has fantasized for years about killing the doctor whose experimental radioactive cocktail was responsible for the death of her 8-year-old daughter. Finally, she decides to put her plan into action. She moves to the neighborhood where the now-retired doctor lives with his daughter, her husband, and their three children, a dysfunctional family if there ever was one. But when Marylou confronts the doctor, she realizes he has early Alzheimer's, and has no recollection of his crime. What would be the purpose of killing him now, if he'd have no idea who she was and why she was killing him?

But Marylou can't...[read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

It’s 1976. Despite fierce international controversy over whether in vitro fertilization should ever be performed in humans, doctors around the world race to be first to produce a baby by this procedure. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist-embryologist at the University. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in history books.

Several months later, Dr. Sanford’s patient, Joyce Kennett, gives birth to a healthy boy, and Sanford prepares to make an announcement at a press conference. But before it convenes, Ms. Kennett’s schizophrenic husband kills Dr. Hearn and then himself. Police Detective Bernie Baumgartner’s investigation is hampered by pressure from influential people at the University who want to control sensationalism that might harm the institution. Tenacious Baumgartner suspects more at play…

Learn more about the book and author at Larry Karp's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: A Perilous Conception.

The Page 69 Test: A Perilous Conception.

Writers Read: Larry Karp.

--Marshal Zeringue