So, what if some homeless guy starts healing the sick one day, a fellow who remains anonymous as long as he can and asks nothing in return from those whose lives he has saved? Would you believe that he was performing miracles or would your skeptical nature make you certain that he was involved in one of the biggest scams ever pulled on a gullible public? But then what if he healed one of your children, granting that child the future that was about to be lost to some terminal illness? Then would you believe?

When one skeptical New York reporter survives a terrible automobile accident despite losing so much blood that she could not have possibly lived through it, she decides to find the man who reportedly molested her in the street as she was bleeding to death. And when she walks out of the hospital just hours after doctors gave up on saving her life, that is exactly what she does.

It soon becomes obvious to Mary that the man was, in fact, healing her injuries, not molesting her, and she suddenly realizes that she has been handed every reporter’s dream story. She comes to understand that she has become part of something much bigger than just a career-making newspaper story, however, and finds herself falling in love with the man and his mission, a turn of events that places her in more danger than she ever could have imagined.

A man like John, a healer and a visionary who wants to change the world forever, is a threat to some powerful people who like things just the way they are. John has a plan, after all, that would end poverty everywhere in the world and allow mankind to live the Utopian lifestyle that has been dreamed of for centuries. His very existence is a threat to those on top of the heap who do not want to lose their power and economic dominance. When the governments of countries such as China and Russia demand that the U.S. put a muzzle on John, he literally becomes a threat to world peace, and there are plenty of people suddenly willing to do whatever it takes to shut him up.

What If? is quite a ride and it has one of the strangest endings I have encountered in a long time. It is a provocative look at what might happen if a true miracle worker were to suddenly appear in the modern day world, a hopeful, but sad, story about the most likely “what if” scenario that would develop from such an event.

Stephen N. Lee has written an unusual thriller that will have the reader quickly turning pages almost all the way through it. My only quarrel with Lee’s storytelling is the excessive number of pages he used on a rather anticlimactic court trial toward the end of the book. That section, in fact, stalled the book’s momentum to such an extent that it became somewhat of a chore to get through it. But that is a small complaint when compared to the pace maintained in the rest of the book.

WARNING: Do not succumb to the temptation to read the book’s ending first because this is one time that I can guarantee that you will regret doing that.

Rated at: 4.0 ( )