In Irish-born Patrick's tantalizing debut sci-fi thriller, criminal investigations feature a new breed of specialists with the ability to briefly resuscitate murder and accident victims and ask them whodunit (or what-dunit). Young Jonah Miller is the top-rated reviver--the most skilled at bonding with the dead and the most sensitive in ensuring that family members get a chance to say goodbye to their loved ones. But Jonah's special abilities make him vulnerable to dark forces that leave him with frightening visions. He and his colleague at the Forensic Revival Service also must contend with mortal opponents, including the afterlifers, who regard revivals as desecration, and a secret conspiracy poised to take revivals to a dangerous extreme. And then there is the military's secret policy of killing suspected terrorists so revivers can interrogate them. Patrick depicts the world of revivers in vivid detail. Jonah must take a special drug in increasing doses to alleviate the physical aftereffects of connecting with the dead and wipe out the psychological "remnants" of such encounters. The touch of a reviver can cause a nonreviver to experience a "chill"--at its worst, "a taint of death and a deep fear." Revivers are required to take periods of downtime called "tails" to ward off burnout. The book features an alluring femme fatale in Tess, a beauty Jonah fell for as a teenager who mysteriously appears out of nowhere, and another strong romantic interest in Annabel, a reporter investigating the murder of her father, who wrote a best-seller about the first reviver a decade ago. When Patrick ramps up the supernatural component in the book, it becomes a more ordinary thriller. This first installment in a planned trilogy is great in the setup and not so great in the home stretch, which may not bode well for Books 2 and 3.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Supernatural thrillers don't get much better than British author Patrick's assured debut, the first in a trilogy. Journalist Daniel Harker stumbles on the story of a lifetime when he pursues a tip about a fraudulent medium, Eleanor Preston, who shows the skeptical Harker that she can briefly revive the recently dead. Harker soon becomes a wealthy bestselling author by demonstrating to the world that certain people, who become known as revivers, have this uncanny ability. Those who have lost loved ones now have a chance to say a final goodbye, while the police can employ a reviver to get a murder victim to identify his or her killer. During one such conversation with a dead woman, forensic reviver Jonah Miller hears something unsettling from the woman's mouth that suggests dark forces at work. Patrick has carefully thought through the implications of this phenomenon, including religious objections and insurance issues, and maintains the suspense throughout. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Apparently, the ability to revive dead people to bring them briefly back to a semblance of life has existed for a long time. Only recently, though, has it come to light, sparking an entirely new field of scientific and spiritual study and a new form of criminal investigation. Jonah Miller, a Reviver, works for the police, bringing recently deceased people back to (temporary) life so they can speak one last time with their loved ones or, even better, finger the people who killed them. When a high-profile journalist, the man who first popularized reviving, is murdered, Jonah teams up with the dead man's daughter to find the killer, uncovering secrets in the process that impact his own life in horrific ways. This is a gutsy book. The author has taken a fairly wild premise and presented it in a matter-of-fact, cop-novel way; we either buy into it or we don't. Helping us decide in the affirmative is Jonah himself, a lead character who has what it takes to anchor a genre-bending series. An interesting debut.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist