The Touch

A superior supernatural excursion from the author of The Tomb and The Keep. Alan Bulmer is a caring doctor, interested in his patients as people, with a thriving practice and a failing marriage. After an encounter with a scruffy madman, he finds he has acquired the power to heal any disorder with a touch - but only for a single, unpredictable hour each day. Soon he is besieged by hopeless incurables clamoring for miracles. Meanwhile, rumors reach the medical establishment; they demand that Alan disavow all knowledge of the mysterious power. Alan refuses and continues to help the sick; only rich sculptress widow Sylvia Nash believes in him (along with her Vietnamese gardner, Ba, who knows the miraculous touch as the "dat-tay-vao"). Unfortunately, the more Alan uses the touch, the more he loses his true medical skills; and so when amoral researcher Charles Axford invites him to the James A. McCready Foundation for a scientific investigation of the "talent," Alan accepts. He quickly cures Axford's daughter of her chronic kidney failure - but Senator McCready, suffering from the progressive neurological disorder known as myasthenia gravis, plans to be cured by Alan, then to denounce him in order to safeguard his own political ambitions. Meanwhile, Axford discovers that every time Alan uses the touch, a part of Alan's brain degenerates. Sylvia, Axford, and Ba help poor Alan avoid McCready's trap (when threatened, the dat-tay-vao acts independently to kill, not to cure); finally, Alan - practically a walking vegetable - touches Sylvia's autistic son, Jeffy, and passes on the gifts. Hair-raisingly plausible ideas, winningly developed, set in a well-paced, often gripping narrative, with Wilson (a real-life M.D.) knowing how to add verisimilitude. His best so far. (Kirkus Reviews)