The Orlando Project (review)

@agatha

Published in

books

· 1 week ago

by Matteo Rimoldi

Plot

Research laboratory. Specimen 698 escapes from its cage. Dr. Parker issues an urgent order to capture it as soon as possible, because it is very, very dangerous...

Part One: THE DOG

New York, present day. Christopher Daniels, known as Chris to his friends, is about to take the “big leap”: he is finally going to ask his girlfriend, Vera Reeve, to marry him.

Chris walks down the avenue leading to his girlfriend's house, and everything seems perfect. He feels calm, with a ring for Vera in his jacket pocket, but... something suddenly appears: it looks like a dog, a very large one. Chris, who isn’t afraid of dogs, pets it and finds a tag. He reads: "RESEARCH LABORATORY." But the dog, initially calm and docile, becomes suddenly aggressive and fierce, biting Chris on the arm. He struggles and manages to free himself, but realizes he has lost a lot of blood. He barely makes it to Vera’s house, where she rushes to help him and calls a doctor. Once there, the doctor stitches Chris's wound and advises him to rest, but the pain keeps him up all night.

Part Two: THE PAIN

The next morning, upon waking, Chris decides to check the severity of his wound. He goes to the bathroom, removes the bandage, and... the wound is gone. It has completely healed overnight. He decides to ask the doctor for an explanation. Just as he is about to leave the bathroom, a voice orders him to stop. He realizes it is an internal voice. Chris tries to silence it, but suddenly a sharp pain pierces his skull. He collapses to the floor and faints.

Part Three: THE VOICE

Because of this voice and the repeated sharp pains, Chris starts becoming paranoid: he fears he has a brain tumor, stops going to school, and ceases talking to Vera. But this is nothing compared to what follows. Chris realizes that the voice is taking control of him: it orders him what to say and do, changing him from gentle and shy to domineering and aggressive. Eventually, after an argument with one of his students, the voice commands him to kill both the student and his girlfriend and to dispose of their bodies by throwing them into Joshua Lake.

Part Four: JOSHUA CEMETERY

One morning, the bodies Chris dumped in the lake resurface, triggering a police investigation.

That night, Chris assaults Vera. Due to Chris’s behavior changes, Vera begins to suspect that he is responsible for the murders. After much deliberation, she decides to report her suspicions to the police.

Part Five: GHOSTS

At the police station, when Vera sees a sketch of the suspect, she has no doubts left: her Chris is the killer. Chris wants to kill her because she now knows too much. Vera is terrified, but a police patrol follows her everywhere.

One evening, after hearing noises outside her house, Vera steps out and, to her horror, finds the two police officers on guard brutally murdered. She rushes back inside, locking the door behind her, only to realize she is not alone...

Characters

There are not many characters mentioned, but they play an important role in the novel:

Christopher Daniels: a high school math teacher, considered by some students as “the best math teacher.” He is an ordinary man, not very muscular but very shy, until he is bitten by the dog, which drives him mad, making him dangerous and rapidly enhancing his physique. He becomes indestructible: every wound, no matter how big or small, heals overnight. The voice that constantly speaks to him drives him to kill numerous people: two students, police officers, his mother, and Vera’s friend, Tom. He becomes a man destroyed by madness, behaving as though two distinct personalities are battling within his body for control.

Vera Reeve: Chris’s girlfriend, a veterinarian. When Chris proposes, she accepts immediately, crying with joy. Based on Chris’s attention to her, Vera must be beautiful and attractive enough to turn heads wherever she goes. She is very sensitive. When Chris assaults her, she doesn’t report him immediately, thinking it was due to stress, but after repeated incidents, she realizes stress is not the cause.

Sirio: Chris’s dog. The breed is unknown, but he is known to be agile and intelligent. When he realizes his owner has changed, he becomes scared and, in a clever move (biting and breaking his leather leash), manages to escape. Although mentioned infrequently, his intervention proves crucial in the end.

Jim Wiler: the school bully. He is always leaning against the school wall, idolized by three younger troublemakers who follow him like puppies. He’s the type of boy who only knows how to cause trouble and scare younger kids. During a lesson, he insults Chris, who reacts by grabbing him by the neck, nearly strangling him. That same evening, when Chris leaves the school, Jim tries to attack him with a knife, but Chris, now more agile and muscular than ever, isn’t caught off guard, grabs him, and breaks his neck. He then takes him to the lake and throws him in, tying a large rock to his ankles. But the knot won’t hold, and Jim’s body resurfaces.

Tom Carter: a friend of both Chris and Vera, also working at Vera’s clinic. According to the voice in Chris’s head, Tom is “stealing” Vera. Chris first intimidates him by sneaking into his house and killing his cat, pinning it to the front door with a kitchen knife. But when Tom continues to see Vera, Chris returns to his house and kills him, headbutting him until his skull shatters.

Kate Daniels: Chris’s mother, whom he hasn’t seen since he left home to escape his abusive, alcoholic father. She lives in an apartment far from Chris’s home. Guilty of giving him an unhappy childhood, she is killed by Chris, who breaks her neck and leaves her on an armchair in the living room.

David Parker: the head of the laboratory and the one who secretly funds the animal experiments. He is clever, “hiding” his lab in the basement of a blood collection center, accessible only via a magnetic recognition card and a secret code. The escape of specimen 698 becomes crucial for verifying the human consequences of the “Orlando Project.”

Max Wilson: a clever and brave police inspector. He leads the investigation into the deaths of Jim, Kate, and Tom, gathering substantial evidence to incriminate Chris. He eventually helps rescue Vera, and a romance develops between them.

Review

Author Matteo Rimoldi explains that the book’s title, The Orlando Project, referencing the experiment conducted in the lab with specimen 698, draws inspiration from Orlando Furioso, the strong, courageous, and indestructible soldier. The aim of the experiment is linked to this last word: to create invincible soldiers.

I greatly enjoyed this novel, both because I am a fan of thrillers and because the intertwining events in the story are captivating and full of pathos—the ability to evoke emotion and complete involvement in the events. There is an attraction to the story, an unsettling aura, an insistence on gruesome sequences that hit like a punch to the gut, and this is precisely the key to the novel: the disturbance caused by what could happen to anyone at any moment.

The book is divided into five chapters, each preceded by a quote from great authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Dante Alighieri. Additionally, there is a prologue at the beginning and an epilogue at the end.