Product Description

Description: Jenna Blake, a freshman in college, wants to be a doctor like her mother. Unfortunately, she has a deep dislike of blood and an even deeper fear of doing harm to someone. Her father suggests an unusual optionmedical examiner. Although Jenna finds the idea disgusting, she decides to go for an interview at the campus hospital. Part of the interview involves witnessing an autopsy. What she learns there draws her into a medical mystery with political ramifications. Unsure who she can trust, Jenna fights to discover the source of a new and lethal disease. But in her determination to find the truth, she makes herself the target of a sinister killer. Her only hope is to outsmart this ruthless shadowy figure. Body Bags offers an intelligent, believable young woman while building suspense to a fever pitch. Narrator Julie Dretzin perfectly captures Jennas courageous spirit. Retail $43.75US - New.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3909834 in Books
• Published on: 2001
• Format: Unabridged
• Running time: 410 minutes
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• 5 pages

Customer Reviews

Nancy Drew for Adults...fun - Julie Dretzin's Narration is Great
In this book we are introduced to Jenna Blake. Jenna is a freshman, just reporting for her first semester at Somerset College, near Boston. Her mother is a surgeon, and her father is a professor at Somerset. The parents are divorced, and they argue a lot. Jenna wanted to be a doctor, but blood and the thought of making a mistake that might kill someone make her want to pass out. On her father's suggestion, she takes a part time job assisting at the Medical Examiner's office, assisting Dr. "Slick" Slikowski; a wheel chair bound Medical Examiner who sometimes doubles as Forensic Anthropologist.

That's your background. Toss in a roommate, some friends, and you have the cast of characters. Then comes the plot. Some Costa Rican madman wants to become the next President of his country. People at Somerset are investigating his background. Those people start dying. Not normal deaths, but hideous deaths with bugs in their heads and brain-mushing diseases.

I'll stop there on the plot so I don't give away too much. This book is okay as a semi-entertaining, sort of Nancy Drew for an older audience romp. The characters talk, act like, and ARE barely out of their teen years. The events do not spawn the real-world reactions that they would if they actually happened. The story is very insular, a bit out-there and contrived, and revolves around only its few characters; this is its major flaw. The world can't be ignored by just not writing about it, and a major new disease with mind-numbingly lethal consequences would draw more attention than a visit from a single CDC doctor and one FBI agent. If you don't mind suspending your belief in the real world, BODY BAGS is a fun read, and Julie Dretzin has a cute, attractive voice with just enough separate intonations to bring the variety of characters to life.

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