VIBE TRIBE
a psych-tech suspense/thriller by John Selby
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VIBE TRIBE is part of the Jack Hadley suspense series. All four books in this series progressively expose three generations of California scientists, ranchers, writers and adventurers as they struggle to locate and bust up a series of white-collar American terrorist plots.
Spanning modern history from 1967 to 2024, these four novels meld action, suspense, science fiction, mature romance, and emerging mythology. The plots are based on the clandestine research conducted at a historic real-life federal research center in the mid-sixties, where hypnosis, psychedelics, yogic mind-manipulation, and chemical-weapon experiments were discovered - and then went underground.
VIBE TRIBE ~ the plot
Vibe Tribe takes place mostly in Europe in the early 1980s. The plot follows Benjamin Hadley and his Stanford-research brother Robert and several other subjects in that early Institute research. After being mentally abused with illicit experiments, they had been given supposedly life-long hypnotic conditions not to remember the illegal bio-warfare research conducted by Dr. Ivan Whaler at the Institute. But now (in 1984) Benjamin, who has become a successful novelist, has remembered and written an incriminating exposé mss.
The day before the Frankfurt Bookfaire, in California nervously awaiting news from his agents in NY and Zurich, Benjy receives a fax from his agent in Zurich ordering him to come fast to the Bookfaire to sign an exclusive contract.
Benjy arrives and encounters the startling female lead of the novel, Helvetica (Helvy for short) just before his agent Martin is murdered in his booth. Benjy and Helvy get thrown together in a tumultuous romantic battle as they’re accused of the murder. Knocking the Frankfurt police chief unconscious (he tries to arrest Helvy for this and previous murders) they escape, determined to find the real murderer and defuse a lurking terrorist plot.
An ultimate bad guy in the story, publisher Karl Menning, loans them an escape car from Frankfurt – but the car explodes and nearly kills them. They hi-jack another car and hide at a spooky country cottage in Switzerland with Martin’s widow - who was once Benjamin's girlfriend. Discovering a new clue through her, Benjy and Helvy drive in disguise down to Lago Maggiore.
Breaking inside the headquarters of The Hub, they come under the spell of Victor, Helvy’s bizarre hypnotist-mystic uncle. They battle with him and seem to ultimately win – only to get suddenly taken down by Karl Menning, who was Martin’s killer.
Karl and his team are planning that night to activate a heinous bio-plot to reduce world population through a virus that sterilizes tropics populations – the seeming good guys (scientists and businessmen) are plotting an unethical and devastating attack on women, supposedly to save the world from ecological disaster. Through a series of jolting twists, our two heroes finally fight and destroy both Victor and then Karl – only to come finally face to face with Dr. Ivan Whaler.
Dying of cancer, Ivan attempts to force Benjy and Helvy to take the virus to Africa for release. The plot ends in a stunning cliff-hanger, leaving readers wondering what they themselves would do in this provocative situation ...
VIBE TRIBE ~ the characters
The plot outlined above is what drives the story - but it's the characters who bring it alive. They're struggling with very deep issues throughout. And in the meanwhile, Helvy and Benjy are falling in love in quite a unique way. The action is very fast - and the ending a serious jolt for the reader. Click below to read the book!
