The Calypso Directive

Ponderous prose (“His emotions were a raging river, dragging his mind toward a dangerous cascade”) undermines Andrews’s debut medical thriller. When Will Foster, initially identified only as Patient-65, breaks out of the facility where he’s been held in quarantine for five months, he’s surprised to find himself in Prague, not New York City. Will’s escape sets off alarms at the de rigueur evil drug manufacturing giant, Vyrogen Pharmaceuticals, which has been pursuing an immortality drug in a project named for Calypso, the nymph who offered Odysseus eternal life. Foster reaches out to an old flame, Julie Ponte, for help, and the pair spend the rest of the book dodging thugs in the pay of ruthless Vyrogen executive Meredith Morley. A mysterious Boston think tank is also thrown into the mix, but transcripts of its team members’ communications put the brakes on what little momentum the story line has. Agent: Kristin Lindstrom, Lindstrom Literary Management. (Apr.)