In Snail’s Pace: The Inventor by John Miller Conn, we meet Lawrence Roebuck, born a brilliant child.
From a young age, in his preteen years, he was already building scientific and electronics kits. He built so many that in the end the company was sending him kits for free. Even school held no challenge for “Buck,” as he was affectionately called. He graduated from high school and was off to college at the ripe old age of fourteen. Not only did he graduate from college but he went on to medical school and became a doctor. He did all this for one very simple reason: to find out what his father had really died of. He was just a child when his father died and Buck was not satisfied with the decision of the coroner. He was determined to find the real reason for his father’s death.
He returnes home to find his father’s ranch closed up and all the help gone. Since Buck was a minor at the time of his father’s death, the bank had put his father’s estate in trust for him and paid him an allowance. The conditions set are to last until he attains the age of 25, at which time he would be given the full amount of money.
Buck resurrects the ranch, meets a beautiful Mexican girl and begins work in his lab. He is determined to find out the cause of his father’s death. After some diligent investigating he finds out and begins working on a device that would keep other people from dying in the same manner.
Snail’s Pace is a very compelling and intense book. The author must be commended for the attention he paid to such detail as the medical terminology and some of the procedures. This first book of the trilogy by Mr. Conn is one that I would consider a general audience book. It is wholesome and exciting without the colorful language or much of today’s violence. I enjoyed the book and give it a well-deserved B on my scale.
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