Editorial reviews for Immortal in Splashed Ink

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A novel in which seemingly unrelated strangers become entangled in an international mystery. 

Garber’s fiction debut opens with a seemingly innocuous incident. A hiker in Malaysia stumbles across some bats, which isn’t exceptional given the sheer number of bat species native to the area. But these bats are out during daytime, and they’re all dead. The hiker thinks nothing of it until she later becomes severely ill. Garber shifts the scene quickly to the office of experienced Long Island divorce lawyer Aruba Jones, who’s confronting a particularly irate man in her reception area. Jones has served papers to Jack Cedar, a professor, on behalf of his aggrieved wife, Aimee, who’s trying to prevent him from absconding with their two children. The problem? Jack says he’s never met this woman, isn’t married to her, and certainly has no children with her. Despite the fact that Aimee Cedar paid her $25,000 in cash as a retainer, Jones quickly learns that she’s been duped, and the situation steadily grows more bewildering. The airplane on which the professor had intended to travel the morning after his meeting with Jones mysteriously disappears along with all of its passengers, including his colleague George Hong, a science professor. When Cedar calls Hong’s wife to express his sympathies, she tells him that her husband had phoned her before the flight and told her he was having a drink at the airport…with Cedar, who wasn’t there. Garber skillfully dramatizes this developing mystery and steadily connects it with the rash of illnesses signaled by those dead bats in Malaysia. Her characters are multidimensional, and although their dialogue can sometimes feel wooden (when Jones asks about Hong’s research, for instance, she reflects, “But I am thinking that this topic is not likely to be the link to recent events that we are looking for”), their flaws are every bit as believably rendered as their strengths. 

And the handling of her book’s pace is genuinely gripping. This is an assured and memorable debut. 

A complex, involving suspense thriller about the dark origins of a strange illness. 

Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 2600 Via Fortuna Suite 130 Austin,TX 78746 

indie@kirkusreviews.com

When divorce lawyer Aruba Jones is hired by Professor Jack Cedar’s wife to file a restraining  order and stop him fleeing the country, Aruba gets the job done. But in this science-based  thriller, nothing is as it seems.

Immortal in Splashed Ink is a dual narrative that moves between events taking place in Asia  from 2014 to 2021 and present-day Long Island, New York. In Asia, Dr. Pao Den Chin, a  respected Chinese scientist, gradually suspects that the ruling Communist Party is covering up  environmental damage caused by the mining of rare earth minerals. It’s also possible that a new  viral illness has been transmitted to humans from bats. 

Meanwhile, in Long Island, Aruba Jones is shocked when Jack Cedar arrives at her office and  angrily tells her he has no wife. 

Aruba and Jack are engaging characters, and their sharp dialogue sparkles. Cedar is a  respected professor of rare earth minerals at NYU, but how can Aruba trust him when the  woman who claimed to be his wife was so convincing? Den Chin is another strong, wellrounded character, a man who has succeeded in the Chinese Communist Party despite his  Taiwanese heritage. 

Locations are well described, and the scientific underpinning to the plot is woven successfully  into the story. Emerging links between Jack’s work and the parallel Asian storyline will have  readers turning pages until all is revealed.  

The dual structure Garber employs has it weaknesses. When Aruba and Jack discover the truth,  readers have already learned everything from Den Chin’s storyline; this makes the ending  anticlimactic and repetitive. Two minor characters pivotal in linking the storylines aren’t well  fleshed out, and at points, the writing slows the pace; characters’ movements and thoughts are  over-described, for example, and dialogue tags, adverbs and explanations are over-used. 

Nonetheless, with likable central characters, solid description and plenty of action, this is an  entertaining and timely story.