After joining Bland Corporation’s marketing department, Adam meets the boss’s daughter, Jenny, and they fall in love. As a result, the VP decides to eliminate the junior executive. At Bland’s science division in Cambridge, Adam meets Claire, an eccentric young genius fixated on time travel. Later, he uncovers the VP’s plot and, spiraling, ends up in a mental hospital. Ashamed to face Jenny, he seeks solace in the Hudson Valley with his mad scientist uncle. There, Adam vows to win back Jenny. But how? If only he had a time machine.
Ramirez expertly evokes the cutthroat era of Mad Men, especially when tragedy strikes during Del and Adam’s slogan presentation of The Future Is Bland, resulting in Adam being admitted to Bellevue Hospital and fracturing his relationship with Jenny. Fortunately for Adam, his family solicitor manages to get him released into the custody of his great-uncle, Nathan West, a scientist whom Adam has never met and lives in the Hudson Valley.
The story moves briskly, as Adam becomes involved in a scientific experiment conducted by his uncle’s research assistant, Halsey Dean, who has somehow managed to bring to life the detached head of a recently-executed serial killer. Though this is a jolting twist, Ramirez’s quirky dialogue and convincing milieu makes it believable, quickly immersing readers into a twisty plotline focusing on the serial killer’s ability to control others. What began as a sort of coming-of-age narrative about a college grad in the 1960s quickly evolves into a spirited, genre-crossing story that will keep readers riveted until the exciting conclusion.
Takeaway: Surprising romance of science, marketing, and the possibility of time travel in the 1960s .
Comparable Titles: Jonathan Strahan’s Someone in Time, Robert Silverberg’s Recalled to Life.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
