In 1899, Charles H. Duell, then the Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, allegedly declared that “Everything that can be invented, has already been invented.” That statement, whether apocryphal or real, stands as a testament to the hubris that often confronts true innovation. The medical world is perhaps the best example of a field where this kind of stagnation could mean the difference between life and death. The novel CONTRAPTIONS immediately forces readers to confront this outdated belief by starting with a life-ending error and proving that the need for new inventions is as urgent today as it was a century ago.
The book plunges us into the operating room, detailing a complex, life-saving triple bypass surgery. The prose is precise, describing the meticulous process of placing the patient on the heart-lung machine and delicately stitching the coronary arteries. It is a powerful display of existing medical inventions, with all this existing genius, a catastrophic flaw emerges: human error.
Dr. Sanjay DeBakee, the surgeon, is described as “average at best.” With the final stitches of the bypass surgery nearing completion, he clumsily ties a knot. As he turns to pass the needle holder, the small curved needle strikes the sternum and falls into the pericardial sac surrounding the heart. In the intense focus of the operating room, no one notices. The chest is closed, the heart is restarted with a gentle electric shock, and life hopefully resumes, with a deadly piece of metal resting near the patient’s most vital organ.
However, this single, horrific event, a simple dropped needle, is the ultimate rebuttal to the idea that innovation is complete. The existing tools and procedures were not enough. They lacked a final, failsafe mechanism to account for human fatigue, arrogance, or distraction. This is the precise vacuum that the protagonists, Derek Cannon and Ojo Jenachukwu, attempt to fill with their invention, the Jennon QT7 surgical alarm. Their device is born not from a desire to reinvent the wheel, but to perfect the existing system by eliminating a known, fatal flaw.
The need for new inventions extends immediately beyond the hospital’s sterile walls into the secretive, high-tech world of NEXUS, the National EXploration of the Unknown and Space. Located outside Houston, NEXUS is a privatized, massive structure dedicated to “highly secretive research endeavors” that cannot be pursued by a government agency.
The book shifts abruptly from the contained drama of the operating room to the chilling secrecy of this fortress. The description of the octagonal granite building, the electrified fence, the missile launch pad, and the descending hydraulic chamber to the “bowels of the fortress” where a floatron is loaded with three large wooden crates, proves that the limits of human curiosity and invention are constantly being pushed.
In the end, while surgeons perfect their knots, others launch clandestine projects that operate outside public oversight. The world is being shaped by new devices that are being developed at covert facilities, proving that invention is an ongoing, frequently hidden process that will never end. But are these contraptions safe from the hand of evil? Only time will tell… For more information and insight, please read CONTRAPTIONS.
Contraptions is an engaging blend of suspense, mystery, and innovation. The narrative depicts a strong, collaborative partnership between two inventors working together to solve a murder while staying alive. Contraptions provides a rich foundation for an engrossing and fast-paced techno-medical thriller that captivates the reader from start to finish.
Head to Amazon to purchase your copy: https://www.amazon.com//dp/1917238290.
