In the inventive science fiction thriller Big Time by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman, Golden State), a woman wakes in a hospital bed after an abduction with what seem to be two sets of memories, and a Food and Drug Administration bureaucrat takes on a shocking conspiracy.
Before she regained consciousness in the hospital, Allie had escaped from the woman who had abducted her. She had tried desperately to call her husband, wondering what had happened to her baby from whom she was separated--except she also remembers never having married or had children.
Grace Berney works at the FDA, where she is asked to come in after hours to investigate an unusual portacath in a hospital patient, hoping it will help to identify her. When work begins in the morning, the patient, Allie, is gone, and the request has been dropped. But Grace can't let go of the suspicion that someone used her for some unspeakable purpose.
In most of Winters's speculative fiction, set in worlds clearly distinct from our own (such as in Underground Airlines, set in a U.S. in which the Civil War never occurred), his ability to make the setting feel real through small details draws in readers. Big Time proves his talent remains just as strong when the speculative premise is unknown until nearly the end: Winters slowly feeds information to both characters and readers alike through a high-stakes pursuit for information while Allie runs from abductors. Readers will remain enthralled even past the last pages, as the epilogue leaves ominous implications. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library