Oktober

An apparently fatal incident occurs when schoolteacher Jim Harper is skiing near a small research station owned by the giant multinational Risinger-Genoud. Even treatment with their new, untried and experimental superdrug cannot save his life.Or so it seems. For Jim Harper, though left for dead, has survived. But in the long haul back to health and sanity, he begins to realise that something terrible has happened to him. Now the only way in which he can unravel the mystery in his mind is to go back to the point where it began to develop - back to Risinger-Genoud and their Oktober programme. And Risinger Genoud are going to be very interested to see him.Oktober is a frightening journey into a world of greed and lies, a world in which the cover-up is not only a way of life, but something planned ahead of time. Step by horrifying step, Jim Harper unravels what has been done to him, and then designs the perfect act of vengeance, an act that teeters on the brink of madness...

From Publishers Weekly

British writer Gallagher follows his crime/horror novel Valley of Lights with this tepid thriller centering on the illegal drug-testing activities of a multinational pharmaceutical firm called Risinger-Genoud. After having been accidentally knocked unconscious in the company labs, Englishman Jim Harper, a teacher in a Swiss private school, is secretly injected with an experimental amphetamine-like drug, which at first seems ineffective. Eventually, however, he is restored to consciousness--and begins to experience harrowing nightmares that threaten his sanity. Risinger-Genoud takes steps to cover up its involvement, dispatching a attractive female employee to keep tabs on Harper, now hospitalized in London. Escaping her clutches, Gallagher falls into a trap engineered by Rochelle Genoud, daughter of the company's founder. Unfortunately, Gallagher does not convince the reader of Harper's imminent danger or that the conglomerate's intentions for the drug are more than casually sinister. Though there are a few good chase scenes, and some of Harper's nightmares are suitably menacing, the novel doesn't achieve any momentum. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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