The Touch

This was the best of the Adversary cycle. I waited too long to read this one.

I have been a fan of F. Paul Wilson since picking up my first book of his in the late 80's. I had to buy this again so that I could get the experience again. I have read just about all of his books and I have never been disappointed. It will be sad day when he writes his last book. FPW keep up the good work...you have me hooked.

I am a book junkie and was on e-bay a while ago when I found a deal of 52 horror novels for 24 dollars. I jumped on it. I have read around 20 of the books from that collection and to my disappointment, they have not been good. Until this one. This book was magic in its' purest of form. It is properly titled as it will touch your very soul and make you ache for the highly ethical sweetheart of the doctor who is the main character. This one book alone was worth every penny of that 24 dollar investment.

Suddenly, Dr. Alan Bulmer can work miracles. Dr. Bulmer is a terribly idealistic family physician who has worked on Long Island for 12 years taking care of whole people rather than diseases. Naturally his wife is ambitious, materialistic and wants Alan to start doing something more useful. Also on the scene is rich, flirtatious Sylvia Nash who is devoted to her autistic son and supported by her Vietnamese gardener / henchman. Soon after testifying in Senate hearings about the future of medicine (I have no explanation for how an idealistic, unambitious family practitioner gets into Senate hearings) and a weird encounter with a dying crazy man Dr. Bulmer discovers that he has The Touch. For some time each day he can perform miraculous healings - but nothing comes without a price. Add in an overly powerful, incurably ill Senator, the cynical specialist who works for him, and assorted crowds of people who want their miracles now, and things get pretty complicated for Dr. Bulmer pretty quickly. In many ways this is light reading but it hits such a deep chord of what good people really want to do and how people in general react to miracles that I still consider it worth re-reading.

This is not your typical hooror book but more like a supernatural medical mystery. A very interesting book which you will need backround to follow, The Keep really needs to be read first or this could lose you, definitely not a stand alone book, but it is so good I still gave it 5 stars.

I became a big fan of F. Paul Wilson after reading The Keep and The Tomb. The Touch was the third book of his that I read and I was not dissapointed. The novel began a little slowly with an introduction of the characters but soon developed into a mysterious thriller. I liked the story and how Wilson only lets the reader know what's happening to the main character as he is finding out himself. I thought it was a very intelligent and thrilling book and a very worthy addition to Wilson's Adversary Cycle. The Tomb is still my favorite by far but I thoroughly enjoyed The Touch as well as any of the others.