A Review of Alan Glynn’s “Receptor”
Mind Altering
Alan Glynn’s Receptor is a wow of a thriller. That may be surprising because, generally speaking, books that come out in January are crappy. The holidays are done, everyone’s back at work, and nobody has time for reading again, right? Well, for a January book, Receptor is a novel that should be read by anyone with a passing interest in the thriller genre. It’s actually the sequel to the book Limitless, which was made into a Hollywood movie starring Bradley Cooper before he was really famous and, later, was made into a TV show. Here’s the thing: the book doesn’t read like a sequel. I wouldn’t have known it was the sequel to anything unless someone told me. The novel stands on its own.
There are really two competing stories in this read. The first is the story of Ned Sweeney, an early ’50s advertising executive in New York who is given a dose of an experimental drug called MDT-48. The hows and wheres and whys aren’t really important — at least, not too much for this narrative, which sometimes asks you to fill in the gaps. The thing is, MDT-48 is a smart drug that enhances human intelligence. Within minutes of taking the drug, Sweeney is suddenly hobnobbing with the likes of Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, as well as civic leaders such as Robert Moses. What’s more, Sweeney’s able to hold his own intellectually with them. When the drug wears off, Sweeney will do anything to get another dose, even if it puts his family and work life at risk.
The second story is the tale of Sweeney’s grandson, Ray, who is in the political game of helping congresspeople win elections through data mining and such things. Well, Ray’s client, a congresswoman, has a father who wants to meet him. It turns out that the man, Clay Porter, knew Ray’s grandfather — and also knows that his grandfather’s early death was not a suicide. Ray gets pulled into the narrative stream of his grandfather’s life, until the two stories co-mingle and merge eventually.
That’s basically Receptor in a nutshell, where foreshadowing is the name of the game and the tension is drawn out from the reader knowing, or being able to guess, what’s about to happen next to the characters. Glynn also does a deft job at making Ned Sweeney go from ordinary to basically really, really smart for his time. That ability for the reader to believe in the fantastic is what the novel ultimately hinges on. Sure, this is a book about CIA involvement in mind-control drugs, and the whole MK-Ultra project. But it’s also a novel about character. Thankfully, we have likable characters here that we don’t want to see bad things happen to. Even if we do know bad things will eventually catch up with them.
The novel does have a groaner though: Glynn is angling for a trilogy because this novel certainly does end on a cliff-hanger in the Ray part of the story. I don’t know if the third book will be a more direct sequel or not, but I would imagine that it kind of has to be — which puts the notion of having a stand-alone novel as part of something larger in its tracks. Still, it’s a shame that the novel ends when it does because, in many respects, it is just only starting to get going when it stops abruptly. True, I guess it’s like that old adage: leave them wanting more. Receptor indeed leaves you wanting more of where this drug of a novel comes from, but it’s not a gradual coming down or tapering. It’s pretty much a bucket of water in the face.
While the tension is palpable and the novel will have you flipping pages, it can feel sometimes overwhelming because Ned’s end is never in doubt. It’s a little sad that all of these terrific things, thoughts and encounters happen to him only for it to end up in his death. In the Ray part of the story, there’s a love interest that suddenly weasels its way into things and felt more artificial than natural. Said love interest is not given a whole lot to do other than hang around and hear conversations that must not make a whole whack of rational sense out of context. So that’s a little bit of a liability with this work.
That said, Receptor is still a pop culture confection of gooey goodness. You’ll be thrilled as Ned runs into famous people of the early 1950s and travels to exotic events in America and beyond. You’ll thrill as Ray begins to figure things out and unravel the truth of what happened to his grandfather roughly sixty or more years ago. There are a great deal of thrills and chills and action galore. And, yes, Receptor can be quite a cerebral thriller and chiller to boot, too.
Put it this way, if you’re normally disappointed by January books, you’ll find much more to like than loathe in this concoction. There’s a whole secret world that this book uncovers, and that makes it a must-read for the thriller aficionado. Do the smoke-filled rooms of Mad Men turn you on? Does cloak and dagger politics do the same thing for you? Does the tantalizing prospect of being smarter than you actually are be something that makes you salivate at the mouth? All of these things? Well, then, Receptor is a buzz of a read. It may even go one step farther: this could be the buzziest book ever to be released during the mid-winter doldrums and dark nights of the soul. Glynn has put a lot of effort in making his world seem realistic and tangible. Granted, it may be a bit ludicrous in some respects (a drug that makes you a genius?), but its fun and entertaining, and that’s ultimately all you really need if you’re wanting to be curled up with a good book at this time of year. Receptor should be your go-to for just about everything a thriller should do well. It’s one heck of a trip down the K hole, and makes you wonder what the movie will be like.
Alan Glynn’s Receptor was published by Picador on January 8, 2019.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
