BAD PHARMA

In Lazos and Johns’ thriller, a greedy pharmaceutical company puts lives at risk—first its patients’, then its employees’—in a race to develop a profitable new vaccine.

Executives at Philadelphia-based Onward Pharmaceutical Labs are pushing to complete a trial of RSVIX, a new and potentially dangerous vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, a leading cause of death for infants in the United States.Nora O’Connell, who markets vaccines to doctors and hospitals, is in a new relationship with Nick Rooney, the charming, ambitious head of business development, and Dr. Siddhartha “Sid” Kumar has been assigned to monitor the vaccine trial. Terrence Saunders supervises them all; he’s a former physician who now cares more about the company’s reputation and earnings than he does about patient safety. Sid raises concerns about RISVIX and the company squeezes him out; later, as the dangers of the vaccine become clear and children start to get sick and die, he and Nora pursue separate investigations and take action. Late-night plotting, a high-stakes heist, and a poisoning heighten the drama before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally gets involved, although not before more lives are lost and careers ruined. After the authors inform readers at the start that the novel is “inspired by actual events, dramatized, and embellished for entertainment,” they effectively end it by asking them to consider “what was real and what was a bunch of bollocks.” Throughout, their narrative asks salient questions about corporate accountability, profit, and ethics in drug development. However, the omniscient third-person narrator’s digressions into discussions of such topics as genocide and gender feel scattered. Underdeveloped characters, loosely sketched settings, and a few inexplicable, uncomfortable scenes—as when Nick and Nora adopt a Dominican baby and propose that her mother emigrate to the United States and pretend to be the child’s sister—also drag the story down.

A deep dive into drug-company greed that’s hampered by unevenly executed storytelling.