Book Review: The Experiment

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

The Experiment     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Stephen Kyle
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Thriller
Warner, Jan 2003, $7.99, 448 pp.

In 1945, Nazi research scientist Dr. Viktor Schiller knows he must destroy his work before releasing a genetic abomination on humanity. He genetically experimented with three female prisoners in an effort for their offsprings to accumulate the knowledge of the mother. However, the results prove dangerous as he erased what makes a person human and instead bred a subspecies of killers. He travels to Oztenhausen Concentration Camp to kill the three females, but two of the subjects survive along with the infant daughter of the one he kills as the Americans arrive. Viktor takes over the identity of his Jewish friend, Heinrich Knelmann.

Viktor moves to America to live as Heinrich. He moves in with Heinrich’s son and sister, posing as a psychiatrist. Over the years he kills two of the subject-carriers and is down to two people to clean up his mistake. One is a 1950s offspring whom he plans to turn into a vegetable. The other is that World War II infant that escaped him. He has finally been tracked down as a stuntwoman. Soon he will rectify the blunder he brought forth on humanity.

THE EXPERIMENT is an exciting thriller that hooks the audience because the Nazi experiments during World War II make the theme plausible. The ensemble cast seems real, but especially Alana and her flashbacks to her mother living in a World War II concentration camp. However, the tale belongs to the obsessed German research scientist. Viktor, unlike Victor Frankenstein, tries to take responsibility for what he believes are the horrors he has unleashed on the world yet never stops to see what the true results are.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner