The Rasner Effect-Mark Rosendorf

The Rasner Effect
Mark Rosendorf
L & L Dreamspell, Jan 2009, $18.95
ISBN: 9781603180849

On the Queens-Bronx Bridge are two men as a bomb explodes. Rick Rasner, chief of the Mercury terrorist Duke Organization, and for hire former black ops operative Jake Scarberry face off when soldiers working for General Straker kill the former. Straker tells the latter he is finished as a mercenary doing government work sending him to clean college frat puke as Charlie Wright in Alligator Pond, Florida

Seven years later Rick has become a psychotherapist at the Brookhill Children’s Psychiatric Residence in Pennsylvania. He has no memory of his aggressive homicidal past as Straker’s operative Dr. Obenchain used him in a medical experiment. He struggles with meekness as martinet director Katherine Miller and her abusive staff run the facility with iron fists. He does feel some connection for fifteen year old outcast Clara Blue. Meanwhile his former Duke Organization mates have located him and led by Jennifer Duke is coming for their former leader and soon afterward Strake locates his Duke Organization expert.

With a nod to Clockwork Orange, THE RASNER EFFECT is a tense psychological thriller that opens with a High Noon showdown over the East River and grips the audience with the anticipation of a second High Noon showdown. The key to this taut tale is the ensemble cast especially at the Psycho Residence and the Duke gang who seem real. The hero is a fascinating protagonist who goes from life threatening scenarios to cleaning Frat vomit to life threatening scenarios while his prime adversary goes from cold blooded killer who murdered his fatherly mentor to meek shall inherit the earth back to sinister killer though he lost some of his razor sharpness. This is an entertaining suspense thriller.

Harriet Klausner