Dr. Sean Nolan has been practicing in Woodhaven for decades, and more than once he’s teamed up with the local sheriff to protect the community—even if some of their activities have to stay off the books. When a new, more dangerous admixture of fentanyl begins killing his young patients, Nolan is quick to spur an investigation into the source of the new drug. However, it’s the unexpected death of an otherwise-sober high school student (and the crippling grief of her family) that becomes the doctor’s latest obsessive cause.
E.W. Johnson’s THE EINSTEIN EDICT is not the first novel featuring Dr. Nolan, and it shows. From page one, the author writes with a cool command of technical detail that pervades the text—from the quick application of Narcan to the use of “a laryngoscope and a seven-millimeter endotracheal tube from the crash cart.” The narrative immediately grips the reader with the arrival of a young boy in the throes of an overdose, and both the protagonist and the narrative voice impress the reader with the precision, professionalism, and verisimilitude of the emergency response.
This grasp of technical detail informs the plot and renders it more complex. The difficulties of collecting and interpreting DNA evidence, for instance, are non-trivial, and require Dr. Nolan to consult colleagues to pursue his investigation. Moments like these showcase not only the novel’s grasp of the issues, but also the protagonist’s humanity: he’s a normal person with limits to his knowledge yet none to his tenacity. This humanity is also appealingly rendered in small-town chatter, as the characters relate to each other with the affectionate ribbing of old friends and professionals.
THE EINSTEIN EDICT is at its best here: focused on the town doctor, the sheriff, and their friends as they balance their responsibilities to a grieving community with their desire to bring a perpetrator to justice—even if that means skirting the law. It can stumble when it moves away from those core competencies. Though the banter between the men is pitch-perfect and appealingly folksy, younger characters speak in somewhat stilted language that makes no attempt at sounding age-appropriate. For instance, it’s hard to imagine a 17- or 18-year-old, still groggy from an overdose, saying, “None of this seems real, like it’s some kind of twisted dream. How can one pill do this? How can this happen?” This is a noticeable failing in a text that focuses on the impact of opioids on high school and college students in particular.
THE EINSTEIN EDICT also mishandles its female characters. Nearly every single woman (or girl) in the text is introduced with an appraisal of her physical attractiveness (“Just slightly over weight, she had a pretty face and short blond hair”). Many of these women and girls are strong, hardworking, and competent; but within the context of the plot, they mostly oscillate between expressing grief and carrying out rote tasks that Dr. Nolan has assigned them. Their work is often essential to advancing the plot, but few of them seem to exhibit real agency as characters. This tone of heroic paternalism is probably appropriate for the protagonist and his peers, who are older men in positions of authority, but the fact that it’s played so straight is a real flaw in a text that exhibits so much compassion in other ways.
Overall, though, THE EINSTEIN EDICT has a clear sense of its thematic heart: “A death in a small town [is] never the passing of a stranger.” In the end, it succeeds as both a brisk, complex thriller and a moving portrayal of small-town life—especially when everyday people must confront unimaginable tragedy.
Affecting and compelling, E.W. Johnson’s THE EINSTEIN EDICT: A Dr. Sean Nolan Mystery is both a tight small-town thriller and a spotlight on some of the national crises affecting everyday people in 21st-century America.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader