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Summary: Another great SciFi adventure
Review: Loved Neanderthal and the Experiment - so I eagerly awaited Mind Catcher. I heard the 9 unabridged tapes each day driving to and from work - it was difficult to turn the player off and get out of the car and go to work!!Or go into our home. It's a shame the other 'raters' told the whole story - the end should be a surprise. Luckily I didn't read any of the other ratings - until just now - so I experienced the conclusion without forewarning! THE BEST. Keep those novels coming Mr Darnton.
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Summary: Frightening tale of scientific experimentation.
Review: Many authors have tackled the subject of experimentation on human subjects. In his ambitious new novel, "Mind Catcher," John Darnton embarks on a spiritual and psychological journey. He explores the nature of the human mind and its relationship to the universe, to life after death, and even to artificial intelligence. Does this sound a little far out? It is both extremely far out and quite fascinating.Tyler Jessup is a thirteen-year-old boy who is nearly killed in a climbing accident. He has a horrible wound in his skull, and his brain is extensively damaged. Tyler's father, Scott is heartbroken. Years earlier, he had lost his beloved wife in an airplane crash, and Tyler is all that Scott has left in the world. He is unwilling to let his son go without a fight. Hope appears in the form of a brilliant neurosurgeon named Leo Saramaggio and his colleague, Warren Cleaver, who has helped devise a strange device called a "transcranial magnetic receiver," or TMR. The purpose of this device is to capture the "anima" or the spirit of an individual that makes each of us who we are. Cleaver has been experimenting on severely demented patients in a rundown mental institution, and he is anxious to broaden his studies. Tyler's accident has provided an ideal opportunity for Cleaver and Saramaggio to help this young boy and perhaps become medical pioneers in the study of the human mind. Scott Jessup and Kate Willett, a neurosurgeon assigned to Tyler's case, are skeptical and worried about Tyler's treatment, and with good cause. The doctors may be more interested in making a name for themselves than they are in the welfare of this unfortunate child. As Scott and Kate draw closer together, they join forces to rescue Tyler and prevent any further lives from being damaged by Cleaver's "studies." At almost four hundred pages, "Mind Catcher" is a little too long, and the author resorted to the cliché of the "mad scientist" when he created the character of Warren Cleaver. However, when Darnton writes about the nature of mind and consciousness, his prose is almost poetic and the ending of the book takes flight in a wonderful fantasy sequence. In spite of its flaws, "Mind Catcher" is still an extremely imaginative and suspenseful medical and psychological thriller.
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Summary: Soul in Cyberspace
Review: Mind Catcher is a great read! It is a driving story. A boy suffers a massive head injury. His father goes to all lengths to have him cared for properly and with dignity. An arrogant superstar brain surgeon and his kooky computer-wiz colleague want to carry out revolutionary procedures to restore his brain and his life. The surgeon wants to keep the boy alive connected to a computer and then extract brain cells to be cultivated in a lab and reimplanted into his brain. The computer-wiz plans to extract the boy's mind, his "anima", out of his brain and have it float around in cyberspace. The story raises and teases you with age-old questions about the concept of a soul, its relation to the body and the brain, and its eternal presence. The thriller plot develops in ways one does not expect. The characters are engaging. The style is clear and direct. It is a book you cannot put down.
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Summary: Mental cybernautics
Review: Mind Catcher is both a unique and intriguing tale surrounding a young teenage boy, Tyler Jessup. Tyler's father Scott, a reknowned photographer, is a single parent having tragically lost his wife in a airplane crash. Tyler, during a rock climbing expedition with his best friend Johnny is accidentally gravely injured. Another climber above Tyler lost his purchase and dropped a metal piton which incredibly impaled the unfortunate boy's skull. Although he was quickly hospitalized he suffered severe damage to his cerebral cortices rendering him comatose. Extensive examination reveals very minimal damage to the major centers of the brain. It is at this juncture two celebrated physicians enter the picture, Dr. Saramaggio, a conceited, affluent and immensely talented neurosurgeon and Dr. Cleaver a withdrawn research physician. Cleaver is an expert in the field of artificial intelligence. He is presently working on the isolation of the anima or soul and the plotting of it within the amygdala portion of the brain. He postulates that the anima is what differentiates the mind from the brain. With partially informed consent Scott Jessup agrees to a radical and as of yet never performed operation to save Tyler. A sympathetic protege of Saramaggio, Dr. Kate Willett takes a deep interest in the case and counsels Scott. Saramaggio will painstakingly remove the piton from Tyler's cranium minimizing any further tissue damage. Tyler would then be hooked up to transcranial stimulator-receiver (TSR) via tiny electrodes. The TSR, a computer created by Cleaver, stimulates the brain to send messages in and receive messages coming out. The machine would be used to control and regulate the autonomic nervous system, responsible for involuntary bodily functions such as breathing. Meanwhile, Saramaggio would harvest stem cells from within Tyler's brain which would be cultured in the lab. These would be inserted back into Tyler's brain to hopefully replace the damaged brain tissue. Things seem to be going well until the TSR contraption apparently withdraws Tyler's mind from his unconscious body giving both Scott and Dr. Willett second thoughts. Darnton does fascinating and technical job in pointing out the opposing ethical and medical considerations in such a scenario. In the cyber-age of computers within which we reside, Darnton's narrative is an important piece of literature that may portend our future.
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Summary: I Can See The Movie Being Made Right Now
Review: MIND CATCHER very visual, slick thriller, with a staggering lack of emotion that is always prevalent. I tried to figure out why the author, who has children of his own, was so deficient in portraying feelings-- this, for me would be a critical area to work on if I were to rewrite this otherwise satisfying, fastpaced suspense novel. After all, the plot centers around a child who suffers a terrible climbing injury and his father's desperate attempts to "get to him", despite power hungry surgeons and mad scientists. The only conclusion I could come to was that either the situation was too unbearable for the author to countenance, or he was a cold fish. Either way, have fun reading it, and don't worry--you won't be too upset when you do. And if you hate sci-fi, read it anyway. Call it futuristic, instead. I did. The father, a photographer, is given a love interest in the form of an energetic helpmate. Conveniently, she is a neurosurgon at the hospital where his child is being treated, and she is able to bend the rules and get Dad around the tough guy nurses. By the time the two of them fall in love, it's time for a fun climax, of the totally-unbelievable-but-who-cares type that doesn't involve sex--just good old computers and cyberfantasy. I think the author of this book knows his stuff--and by the way, I think HIS only "fatal flaw" may be the one he brags about when describing the female neurosurgeon's family origin. She is from Greenland. Her mother always told her: "We have ice waterin our veins". Somebody get out the microwave for 45 seconds or so and this book would have been cooked just right. Read it anyway. You'll like it.
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Summary: Mind Catcher
Review: Riveting story. I particularly appreciated the author's precise descriptions of the neurosurgery that takes place in the book.
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Summary: Not About Real Science or Medicine
Review: This book is a paranormal thriller decorated with interesting ideas from recent research. But the book doesn't address any real issues raised by those ideas. The style of the book is that events unfold, and one is told what to believe and feel about them by what the sympathetic characters believe and feel, even when this makes no sense in terms of the events themselves, as happens most jarringly with the central hinge event, where everyone goes berserk over a pacemaker turning on. Ironically, the point the book makes best is that doctors should be honest with their clients, and not gloss over the difficult parts. I liked how the melodramatic, but all-too-plausible villians were put through some changes.
Rating: 
Summary: Yawn
Review: This book just rambles and rambles and doesn't even get interesting until the last 100 pages or so. It's a great premise, but pooly done. Darnton also seems to like to talk about male genitals -- 3 times (and it always is "off to one side") man, how does this apply to the story? Big yawn, move on.
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Summary: Darnton Does it Again
Review: This is a terrific read! Darnton creates another true Sci-Fi-thriller gem. He has an unusual ability to craft a science fiction thriller that is both disturbingly believable and engorssing. He raises important issues at the same time he entertains. This is a great book that will be enjoyed by any reader with even the slightest iconiclastic view of the medical establishment and our internet-based world. I can't wait for his next book!!
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Summary: Biomedical Thriller Chiller
Review: Tyler Jessup, thirteen years old, is on an outing in the mountains when he is struck down in a freak accident--a heavy piece of climbing equipment buried deep in his brain. Fortunately the best neurosurgeon in the country is available and agrees to take the case; unknown to Tyler's desperate father, Dr. Saramaggio is also involved in some--shall we say--questionable research. The book starts with this premise, tells us a lot about the brain and about the frontiers of research, the possibility of rebuilding the brain with neural stem cells, but then veers off into metaphysics. Can the mind be somehow separated from the brain, extracted by a computer, exist somewhere outside of space and time? And would the world's greatest neurosurgeon do anything--anything--no matter how unethical, to pursue his unorthodox research and the glory that might go with it? This should be a great book, and at moments it is. It almost works. Unfortunately the writing is uneven, the characters inconsistent, and the events are foreshadowed to such a degree that they lose a lot of their punch by the time they actually happen. At times the narrative drags. There are too many literary cliches--the "mad scientist" mentioned by other reviewers, the grieving father drinking himself into oblivion, the decaying "asylum" from another century with no evidence of modern hospital practice. The unlikely romance... Then the contrived ending left me with more questions than answers. Well, it was a good book and you will probably enjoy it, but it could have been better. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber
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