Grimwood's impressive debut novel, Breakthrough (Ballantine, 1976), was heavily influenced by EC Comics, concluding its blend of science fiction, reincarnation and horror elements with a surprising and unpredictable twist ending. Cured of epilepsy by a breakthrough in medical technology, 26-year-old Elizabeth Austin has miniature electrodes implanted in her brain. She can control her seizures by pressing an external remote to activate the electrodes. Adjusting to a normal life, she is ready to patch up a troubled marriage and resume her abandoned career. However, as part of the implant operation, Elizabeth gave her consent for the insertion of extra electrodes, featuring experimental functions unknown to science. When one of those electrodes is stimulated, Elizabeth experiences memories which are not her own. She discovers the remote has given her the ability to eavesdrop on her previous life 200 years in the past, and she keeps this a secret from her doctor. Intrigued, she finds the earlier existence appealing and begins to spend more and more time there. Eventually, she discovers that the woman in the past is a murderer who is plotting to kill Elizabeth's husband in the present.
Although Breakthrough went out of print shortly after publication, author Gary Carden ranked it alongside books by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury:
| “ | Over the last 40 years, there are 40 or 50 "good trash" books that have remained in my memory because the writing was graphic, suspenseful and tense. Like the clichéd blurb on the cover of most suspense or crime fiction always promises, I found I "could not put it down." A lot of these managed to frighten me, and that is a pretty good trick. When I read Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, I actually turned on all of the lights, locked the door and finished the book before sunrise. The same thing is true of Stephen King’s Salem's Lot. I read it in a motel in Maggie Valley and ended up finishing it in the lobby where I had the comforting presence of other people. I’ll not forget James Hall’s Bone of Coral or James Lee Burke’s Black Cherry Blues or Ray Bradbury’s October Country. Then there was a book by Ken Grimwood called Breakthrough and William Goldman’s Marathon Man. All of these authors have the ability to "set the hook" in the first page, and then you are there for the long haul, reading as you eat, neglecting the chores and refusing to answer the phone. You aren’t reading Kafka or Tolstoy, and you know it, yet you know the author is far better than most writers of popular "thriller" or "suspense" fiction. Sometimes, he gets pretty close to "literature," but essentially, he is just entertaining you. | ” |
To write this novel, Grimwood did extensive research into brain surgery and epilepsy. Film producer William Castle took an interest in adapting Breakthrough for a movie, but the project was never realized. Breakthrough has certain parallels with David Williams' Second Sight (Simon and Schuster, 1977), coincidentally written the same year and later adapted for the TV movie, The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan (1979). Williams has commented, "As the author of Second Sight, I have to tell you that until I read this Wikipedia page in 2004, I had never heard of Ken Grimwood or his novel Breakthrough."
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