Memoir of the Masses: A Tale of Smoking Mirrors

Leon Mintz
Erie Harbor Productions (2006)
ISBN  0971782814 
Reviewed by Joanne Benham for Reader Views (6/06)


Sean Hamilton is an extremely intelligent young man.  Although still a student at the prestigious Mansfield Institute, he has developed a method of reactivating cells in a dead rat to the point where the rat can get up and stumble around his cage.  Sean wants to refine this technique so that eventually he can clone human organs to replace disease-ridden ones rather than using donor organs.  However, JR Mansfield, the head of the Institute, has a much more sinister use for Sean’s work.  Unwilling to accept Mansfield’s directives, Sean searches for another laboratory where he can continue his work and finds one at The New York Plasma Center, owned and operated by Sasha Beauna, an old woman nearing the end of her life.

As Sean settles in to his new job, strange things are taking place at the Center and Sean, with the help of investigative reporter Mariah Amargo, discovers that vampires are running the Center.  Now Sean finds himself in a life and death struggle between good and evil, as the vampires seek to usurp his research and turn him into one of their own.

The book is written in the first person narrative, so you get the full benefit of each person’s thoughts and ideas.  The page borders are beautifully illustrated with an ancient Mesoamerican calendar.  On the whole, I enjoyed the book, although the dialogue is stilted and needs work and the entire book needs a good proofreading, which the publishers assure me will happen before the next printing.

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