EIGHT LIVES by Susan Hurley

Now this was a page turner, I really could not put this down, and on waking in the middle of the night, just had to keep reading. I had no idea where it was going, what the outcome was going to be, and it was all a great big surprise.

We begin with a woman and child washing up in Hong Kong, refugees fleeing Vietnam in the mid 1970s. Mother and son find a new life in Melbourne, David a brilliant student, who becomes a brilliant medical researcher. The Golden Boy of his med school generation, he creates a drug that will treat and cure auto immune illnesses, but without medical trials on humans it does not have a show of getting approval. Or of making its investors rich and famous. Imagine discovering a cure for multiple sclerosis, rheumatism, lupus and many other sicknesses.  So the long tortuous process of finding funding, 8 guinea pigs, a facility to do the testing begins. And then David dies - was it by his own hand or was he murdered?

This meticulously plotted, twisting and turning story is told from the view points of a number of different characters  - his half sister, his best friend, his girlfriend, a PR/fixer mastermind, and his research assistant. Each of these characters has their own distinctive voice, their own self-interests,  motivations which could all in some way contribute to the mysterious death of David. As well as being a medical mystery, this novel is also a study human behaviour, the deep set secrets we hold within ourselves, and really how little we do know those we are closest to.