Published: Dec. 21, 2010
Words: 94,786 (approximate)
Language: English
ISBN: 9781452404196

Description

In 1954 Baltimore, Sean Reilly, the detective from DEATH IS THE COOL NIGHT, investigates the murder of a Johns Hopkins researcher. The death appears linked to the polio vaccine trials about to begin across the country. LOST TO THE WORLD captures a moment when the world waited for the "summer plague," that had afflicted thousands, including the late president, to be wiped out once and for all.

Tags

mystery, murder mystery, historical fiction, detective, investigation, baltimore, detective fiction, detective novels, detective mystery, 99 cents, detective stories, johns hopkins, polio, medical research, vaccine, detective romance, 1954, polio research, historical mysteries, historical murder mysteries, murder mystery books, romance murder, romance murder mystery, historical mysteries fiction

Available ebook reading formats

Single purchase gains access to all formats. How to download ebooks to e-reading devices and apps.

Format	Full Book	Sample First 20%
Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)	Buy	View sample
Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)	Buy	Download sample
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)	Buy	Download sample
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)	Buy	No sample available
RTF (readable on most word processors)	Buy	No sample available
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)	Buy	Download sample
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)	Buy	Download sample
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)	Buy	No sample available
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)	Buy	No sample available

Reviews

Log-in to write a Review   Log-in to add a Video Review

Review by: Bill Furlow on Feb. 21, 2011 :
A police procedural elevated way beyond the norm of its genre by its setting, Lost to the World takes place in the laboratories of polio researchers at Johns Hopkins University in 1954.

Julia Dell, a secretary in the labs who discovers the body of one of her boss’s colleagues, is herself a polio survivor – “a polio” in the crude parlance of the day. She’s engaged to be married, but not very excitedly so, and lives with her over-protective parents. Her supreme sense of urgency about the work being done at Johns Hopkins, and elsewhere by scientists like Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, has nothing to do with hope for a better life for herself. She knows her ruined leg will never be repaired, but she aches for the still-healthy children who will contract the disease if a vaccine isn’t found soon.

Detective Sean Reilly is determined to solve the scientist’s murder, but he’s distracted by single-fatherhood. His wife died of cancer a year ago, leaving him with two young sons and a babysitter not pleased to be whipsawed by a detective’s irregular working hours. He’s lonely, somewhat scared and, like Julia, beaten down by life’s circumstances.

And then there is the corpse, Dr. Myron Lowenstein – or is it Dr. Lowenstein? What could be easier than to identify a scientist murdered in his own lab at a prominent research institution like Hopkins? In this novel, even the dead guy has a back story.

Sternberg’s universe is populated by old-school Irish and Italian Catholics and Jewish intellectuals, and her story combines elements of anti-Semitism, The Glass Menagerie, gold-digging single women coming of age in post-World War II America and ambitious scientists competing to find the discovery of a lifetime. Baby Boomers who were children in the ‘50s will relate to the prominence of polio in adult conversations of the time and will recall receiving one or both of the new polio vaccines.

Though the identify of the murderer is kept well under wraps until very near the end of the novel, the reader may think he/she knows where the personal story is heading. But there are twists there, too.

This is the second Sean Reilly novel published by Sternberg’s tiny family publishing business, Istoria Books, and the third is in the works. If the others are as well-researched and as finely drawn as this one, she’ll have a franchise that reasonably can be mentioned in the same sentence with Scott Turow’s.

For more reviews of Smashwords books, go to www.greatbooksunder5.blogspot.com.
(reviewed long after purchase)

Reason for report:
— Select a reason — Book is or contains spam Book infringes copyright Same content is published elsewhere with different author (for ex., by private-label rights) Duplicate Incomplete work (such as sample or serial) Should be marked adults-only Category is inappropriate Poorly formatted Nudity or other inappropriate content on cover Nudity or other inappropriate visual content in book Inappropriate erotica content Cover image is improper Content is inappropriate Other violation of Terms of Service Other reason not shown above.

Additional details: