Capitol Reflections by Jonathan Javitt (Review)

Release October 2008 (The Story Plant) * 380 pages * ISBN 13: 9780981608716

Capitol Reflections: A Thriller by Jonathan Javitt is a story of friendship as well as investigation. Gwen Maulder is an FDA scientist whose best friend Marci, a young lawyer, dies suddenly and spectacularly of a seizure while in court. Everyone else dismisses it as a rare and unfortunate occurrence, but Gwen just can’t believe that. Her friend was young and healthy despite her high-stress lifestyle and poor, but not unusual, eating habits. Gwen has a nagging feeling that there is more to her best friend’s death than simple bad luck.

As Gwen starts investigating her friend’s death she finds herself the target of some very influential people who clearly want her to accept her friend’s death and move on. The more she investigates, the more perplexing her friend’s death becomes and the more forceful the opposition to her efforts. Before she is done, she is fighting to save the lives not only of the people around her, but also of everyday people who are blissfully unaware of the danger lurking in their daily routine waiting to claim more lives … unless Gwen can live long enough to stop it.

Capitol Reflections is a medical thriller, a genre that benefits from intimate knowledge of science and medicine. In this case, author Jonathan Javitt is a physician and a scientist, as well as a senior White House health adviser for the last three presidential administrations. He knows his stuff, and he knows how to write.

The plot revolves around the usual unexplained illness and conspiracies. Javitt manages to stay fairly true to current science, which is nice because the food safety questions raised by the book are ones that readers should spend time thinking about. Capitol Reflections has an unusually large cast of good guys, which was interesting because it allowed flexibility in the way events happened and who they happened too instead of having everything happen to one or two people.

I did guess some of the plot points before they were revealed to the reader, but that’s part of the fun–seeing if you can figure out what’s happening before it’s explained to you. The secondary conspiracy (which I won’t elaborate on) was a bit hard to swallow, but I can see why it was included. What you really need to know is that I stayed up until three o’clock in the morning reading.

Jonathan Javitt has written a science-based thriller that should leave you thinking about what you eat and who’s making sure that it’s safe.

Addendum: I’ve read the reviews on the amazon pages that I’ve linked to. The comments lead me to believe that the book underwent further editing between the hardcover and the paperback editions. If you have questions about the book or my review, feel free to ask below.