Super Short Summary

In The Thanatos Syndrome by Walker Percy, Dr. Thomas More, a psychiatrist recently released from prison, returns to his Louisiana home to find people in his community exhibiting strange patterns of intelligence and behavior due to a covert social experiment involving contaminated water, prompting him to unravel the mystery and confront ethical dilemmas about human nature and free will. The book contains depictions of drug distribution, infanticide, and non-consensual experimentation.