La Machine

Marc Lacroix, a psychotherapist, develops a computer that allows two people to exchange personalities. He chooses as his first subject Michel Zyto, his prize patient - a psychopathic sex offender and suspected serial killer. This is the point of departure in a chillingly realistic novel, the ultimate story of switched and stolen identity. What begins as a cutting-edge experiment in mind-body exploration spirals into a nightmare of page-turning suspense when, in his therapist's body, the patient escapes. Savagely sophisticated and intellectually cunning, Zyto uses his newfound incarnation to full advantage with Lacroix's colleagues, wife, and young son. Hidden in the perfect disguise, he plots one perfect crime after another until the deception is carried to its shocking and supremely logical extreme. A high-tech Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Machine turns and twists with deadly speed and diabolical precision, and Rene Belletto provides plenty to think about along the way. Do we all have bits and pieces of other people inside us? What sort of "transference" occurs in close relationships? How do our bodies shape our identities, for ourselves and others? To what unimaginable horrors will our faith in science lead? Are we just ghosts in biological machines? Something of a cross between Thomas Harris and J. G. Ballard, Machine is that rare thing - a novel that succeeds in stopping the heart while stirring the mind.