RIVERS OF THE BLACK MOON by Andrew Goliszek

 Finished Tu 5/11/21

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I had never read, but bought at the main branch in mid September, 1997.

A compelling medical thriller about a crooked pharmaceutical company and the mutation of the AIDS virus.  

From Google Books:

"Richard Zarnoff, the world's leading AIDS researcher, has been brutally murdered in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the eve of making a world-shattering announcement. Speculation runs rampant--what did Zarnoff know that made him a target? Somehow, it all tied in with an unannounced trip Zarnoff made to Zaire, six months ago."

The major 'dark' premise is that a major pharmaceutical company colludes with the US government to use the mutation of the AIDS virus to 'thin out' the unwanted, lower class sections of the population. The pharmaceutical company develops a 'cure' they are well aware that will only be a temporary fix because the virus mutates so quickly. 

Inspector James Macfadden of The Scotland Yard and anthropologist Maggie Kreiser join forces to find out the killer of Richard Zarnoff and what he was going to reveal at the international AIDS conference. Macfadden is on the case because Kreiser was brutally murdered in a hotel room in Scotland. His intestines were removed because the killers seemed to be looking for something.

Stanton Royce is the head of the company that developed Lyfusin, the vaccine for AIDS. The company is happy with the mutation situation because the more people are infected, the more they can sell their vaccine. The problem is that his grandson has contracted a very lethal variation of the disease. 

A weak plot point is that Stanton Royce introduces his grandson to sex on his eighteenth birthday. The hooker that he used for the boy was into very violent bondage sex and this introduction warped his mind forever. I don't think that this is how 'desire' works. 

The book would be a delightful 'beach' read and if you like medical thrillers. And it works better these days because we are in the midst of a global pandemic, COVID, and that virus is very much mutating like the AIDS virus in the novel.