Jonathan Waverly has accumulated a sizable fortune manufacturing realistic robotic mannequins for theme parks. His pet project, the Waverly Research Center, studies the regeneration of spinal cord injuries. The late Congressman had been instrumental in arranging the federal funding necessary to keep the vast research facility in operation. Waverly needs to find a suitable replacement to fill the congressional seat.

Dr. Michael Sims, an emergency room physician at Biloxi Regional Hospital, is Waverly's handpicked candidate. With Waverly's financial backing and powerful position in the community, Michael's success is assured. Until Shannon Donnelly confronts Michael with irrefutable evidence of Jonathan Waverly's connection to the deaths of several persons related to the Research Center, including her father's supposed suicide.

As seemingly healthy hospital patients suddenly die and bodies begin to disappear, Shannon and Michael decide to break into the Research Center. Once inside, the grisly purpose of Jonathan Waverly's facility becomes shockingly apparent.

Fast paced plotting makes Donor an intense read, but the one-dimensional characterizations weaken the effect. This modern day Frankenstein tale requires sympathetic characters I could grab onto as the proceedings escalate in horror.

Shannon is so strident in her pursuit of her father's murderer that she comes across as shrill and annoying. Michael, apparently overwhelmed by the domineering Shannon, seems weak and easily manipulated. And I never fully understood Waverly's motivations at all.

Donor sets a relentless pace culminating in a rousing conclusion that found me reading faster and faster in pace with the action. But the lack of sympathetic characters left me feeling oddly detached from the proceedings. Instead of sharing in the triumphant resolution, I was merely left with an overall creepy feeling.

--Karen Lynch