Not Easy Being Green

The second novel featuring physics professor Lori Barrow (after A Slow Cold Death) returns to the campus of Superior Technological Institute, where superstar biologist Oriol Ortiz is engaged in dubious experiments related to the supposed miracle cures performed at his clinic in Mexico. After Barrow discovers a dead mouse with a fluorescent green brain tumor, she fears that Ortiz’s experiments have gotten out of control. Pseudony­mous author Gage is a physics professor, and her experience shows in her darkly comic and slapstick portrayal of grubby labs, heated competition for grant money, and unhinged postdoctoral students. However, she undercuts herself with flat prose, labored wordplay (celebrity agent Morris Dietrich is known as “Moe Deet,” a pun on the French maudit), and characters who all sound the same. (Mar.)