Review: Medical thriller extraordinaire...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 22, 2013
Buck Fever by Robert Rupp is a medical thriller extraordinaire.  The fact that I started reading this on the first day of deer hunting season in our state made it even creepier.  The premise is totally unique; a strange illness is spreading from deer to hunter.  Even stranger than that is the illness causes savant behavior in humans and really, really weird (I mean really, really, really weird) things are happening to the infected animals.The book has some very well painted characters, the two “cub reporters” looking for the big scoop, Jeb and Katie, pull the story along.  For a thriller, this book had a surprising amount of depth to it; the sage advice from the head of the newspaper, the twist of the Hispanic character showing the automatic bias of most people, the terrifying background of one of the main characters.I felt this took the book above the level of your typical cookie cutter medical mystery novel.  I also appreciate the use of actual medical information giving it an even more realistic feel.  This book has the gruesome, graphic detail you expect in a medical mystery, but was unlike anything I can remember reading before.I would recommend this book, just don’t read it right before going deer hunting.  It will freak you out.