also has stage four cancer, and her prognosis is grim. When Eli looks for some treatment for his daughter, he learns of the existence of the Boomerang. He also learns that several people have died or disappeared to keep it a secret. The rest of the novel involves Eli’s attempts to get the drug for his daughter and keep his family out of the reach of the sinister cabal that believes national security requires keeping the Boomerang a secret at any cost.

The moral and ethical issues involved in The Boomerang could produce a much longer and equally fascinating book, but the author doesn’t spend much time exploring them. Those who want to keep the Boomerang a secret include the nearly fanatic former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the novel’s primary villain) and the Director of the FBI. They believe that an inexpensive cancer cure would essentially bankrupt much of the medical and pharmaceutical industries’ budgets that are devoted to cancer research and treatment, resulting in billions of dollars in lost revenue and thousands of lost jobs. Many books like The Boomerang have a section in which the characters argue about what the “greater good” is in this situation. If such an argument occurred here, it did so eight years earlier, well before this novel began. Instead, the author takes this scenario as a fait accompli. Even Eli’s efforts to get the drug are framed in a purely personal perspective… to cure his daughter, not society in general.

The lack of any ethical arguments in The Boomerang doesn’t detract from its entertainment value as a conspiracy thriller. We’re living in an era when far more outlandish conspiracies are accepted by a good percentage of the public, so readers can easily suspend any sense of disbelief. That’s especially needed here, because The Boomerang relies on unlikely coincidences to a far greater extent than most novels of this type do. Eli discovers the secrets behind the Boomerang fairly easily in the book’s first half. It helps that Eli’s mother, Foncie, is a crack private investigator. It helps even more that Eli’s mistress is a pharmaceutical company lobbyist who provides him with his first leads in the investigation. And it helps still more that the pharmacist who developed the Boomerang worked along the Gulf coast of Alabama, near where Foncie lived, and sold the drug at farmer’s markets before he disappeared eight years earlier.

Even with the series of fortunate coincidences the author stacks in Eli’s favor, he needs a lot more help to have a chance of staying one step of the various governmental black hats on his family’s trail. The author provides that help in the person of Nester Sanchez, the most original character in The Boomerang. Nester is a sort of 21st-century New Mexican Robin Hood. He’s the biggest drug dealer and crime boss in the state. However, he’s also a sponsor of all sorts of good works in the region. Most important for Bella, Nester is a former high school friend and lover of Eli’s wife, Dale. Nester has enough firepower at his disposal to run interference for Eli and his family.

I found the various coincidences and plot contrivances in The Boomerang a bit far-fetched. However, the author keeps the book moving at a rapid pace, so I rarely had time to dwell on how preposterous some of the plot developments were. Also, the portrayals of Eli and Dale trying to cope with Bella’s cancer diagnosis were quite realistic. Robert Bailey lost his father to lung cancer in 2017, while his wife was battling lung cancer. Fortunately, she survived and recovered. The author used his own family’s jumbled emotions during their travails as the basis for the descriptions of what the fictional James family went through.

Another plot development in The Boomerang is also realistic but not nearly as interesting or compelling. The last quarter of the book includes several meetings between Eli or Dale and various government representatives. These meetings resembled, as one character described them, “a mediation without a mediator.” The author is an experienced trial attorney and is well-versed in real-life mediations. Unfortunately, mediation is among the least exciting aspects of trial practice. The back-and-forth negotiations here slowed the pace of the story at the time it should have sped to a climax. Kudos, however, to the author for scheduling a meeting at the top of Sandia Peak, outside Albuquerque. That’s an excellent setting for a thriller segment. (I’ve ridden the tram to the top twice and highly recommend the experience for tourists.)  

Robert Bailey’s previous novels have primarily been legal thrillers, and his inexperience with this subgenre shows occasionally in The Boomerang. The last few chapters of the book drag at times, and there is one unexplained plot development in the final chapter many readers will probably consider an unfair cop-out. Nevertheless, the book is an excellent character study of people who face a grim outlook after a cancer diagnosis. Before any somber emotions overwhelm the story, however, the author plunges readers into an exciting, conspiracy-driven chase thriller. The Boomerang is a solid change-of-direction work from a skilled writer.  

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.