Customer Reviews

Beat the Reaper: A Novel

5 star:		(129)
4 star:		(60)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

1. As if it were a TV show: It's "House" meets the "Sopranos."
2. In historical context: It's the best comic crime fiction debut since Robert Crais's "The Monkey's Raincoat."
3. Through a mourning veil for David Foster Wallace: Greatest footnotes since he died.
4. If you are one of those who only read nonfiction: It will teach you cool stuff about medicine, the Mafia and Auschwitz.
5. In case you like dramatic irony: The violence in it is clinical, the clinical sloppy and vile.
6. As if it were on Facebook: Its friends would be Jonathan Lethem's "Motherless in Brooklyn" and Richard Dooling's "Critical Care," but it would be the funny, outgoing one.
7. On a personal note: It is only the fourth book in my adult life I stayed awake to finish once starting it that night.
8. As if it had already been made into a movie: The book is better.
9. As a bar mitzvah present: Coolest ever.
10. As if flipping through its pages randomly: Did you notice fat men have diagonal creases in their nipples? Who does Michael Corleone imitate when he drops the gun after he shoots the cop? How about an exquisite description of the Hudson in midwinter? There's at least one of these on every page.
11. If you were to judge it by its cover: Don't. It's not Dean Koontz.
12. As an investment; Get the first edition.
13. As if it were the first of many: Please.

I love this book. It has tremendous energy right from the first page, and it doesn't let up pretty much the whole way through. It's fast and smart, and I never felt that the author was talking down to me -- he expected me to keep up, and nothing is throw-away, not even the funny footnotes (that are much more than footnotes in the end...). I'm not sure I'd recommend it for my wife, who likes her thrillers a little more civilized. The ending is over-the-top and not for the squeamish. Then again, it's so consistently outrageous and enjoyable that I want her to read it just so I can talk to her about it! It's that kind of book. I can't really think of anything I've read that's like it. Patsy Cornwell? This is way more fun. Tarantino, sure. And "House," maybe. But nothing on the page.

Still, I'd prefer to give it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars, because it isn't perfect; there are some spots that seem a little less polished, some things that are maybe too hard to follow. It's not always smooth. But those are quibbles, because overall, this is the coolest, smartest, most exciting book I've read in YEARS. It's a rush.

Dr. Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan Catholic, what some would call the city's worst hospital. He's cynical, critical, comical and one tough guy. He's big, not so good looking (in his own words he looks like an Easter Island Sculpture of a longshoreman) and he used to be a mafia hit man. He went into witness protection, got a new identity and that explains why he's a half dozen years older than most of his contemporaries.

His hours are long, but drugs help, so does attitude. One day he has to tell someone about his cancer and it turns out to be Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, someone from his pre witness protection days. At first LoBrutto thinks Doc Brown has come to kill him, because the good doctor has an AKA as well, he's AKA Pietro Brnwa and he is also known as "Bearclaw."

It doesn't take long for LoBrutto to start the squeeze on Peter. Either Peter saves him or he turns him over to the mob. As long as LoBrutto lives, Peter is safe. And thus begins the zaniest thriller I've had under my eyes in just about as long as I can remember. This book has sex in all the wrong (and the right) places, bodies galore, blood too. Tough guy talk and doctor talk abound. Wit is here in all it's glory. If you don't laugh yourself to death reading this book you'll at least laugh yourself silly. You'll be wound up like a spinning toy top too and sadly or gladly, depending on your point of view, you'll still be dizzy with the spinning long after you've finished this story.

This book is definitely worth checking out. It's fun, violent, medically informative, and action-packed. I know it's rather cliche, but this book is honestly very hard to put down. Once you start you'll want to keep going to the brutal end. Josh Bazell has been compared to Chuck Palahniuk. There are definitely aspects of Chuck Palahniuk in his writing. From the heavily detailed medical references to his anti-hero leading character. However his voice and perspective are definitely his own. He offers something new and exciting without coming across as a complete carbon copy of other progressive/alternative/whatever you want to call them/fiction authors. Hurry and read this one before it's turned into a mediocre Hollywood feature film.

I'm not sure what kind of experience it would have been reading the paper version of this book, because the audio version kicks so much butt I don't want to experience it any other way.

I'm not an audio book snob or anything - I get turned off very easily by boring narrators with weird voices trying to fake voices enough so that you know when a different character is supposed to be talking. It takes a lot to grab my interest. But Beat the Reaper just grabs you from minute 1 and doesn't let you go until the end!

The narrator is an amazing match for the force and clarity of the main character. I was completely entertained, even as I was shocked, disgusted, amused and tickled. In the audiobook, the "footnotes" are backed by a kind of quick drum beat that doesn't distract at all from the story. Somehow the narrator manages to change his voice to an "as an aside" tone , breaking away from the action in an almost freeze-frame effect to fill you in on usually gruesome medical or historical details that give context to the action itself. And some of the action scenes have a cool back beat as well.

I listened to it on my ipod, with the ipod tucked in my running armband and my headphones in as I cleaned my house and finished some really boring projects in my basement over the course of a weekend. I was so bummed when it ended and so psyched to come here and read that the sequel is coming out in Feb.

I've rarely enjoyed an audio book as much as this one!

Absolutely loved this book. It starts off fast and zooms along from there. If you love brilliant but flawed anti-heros and funny dialogue, you'll love it, too. Bazell creates interesting characters, throws in some head-snapping plot twists and manages to do do it all in a way that makes you imagine this could almost be reality.

It's not for the squeamish, however.

There are some pretty gruesome descriptions of medicine and violence in here, so if that's likely to keep you up at night, skip this book. The climax actually made me cringe a bit and that rarely happens with books. If you have any plans for being a patient in a hospital, this book will have you seeking alternative treatments.

I hope Bazell is off somewhere writing more. I wouldn't hesitate to pick up a sequel or six.

When the very FIRST sentence... in the very FIRST book... written by a new author is: "SO I'M ON MY WAY TO WORK AND I STOP TO WATCH A PIGEON FIGHT A RAT IN THE SNOW, AND SOME F*HEAD TRIES TO MUG ME!... you know you could be in the right place... at the right time... to be part of a magical... riotous... unruly... maiden voyage... with an author... who... based on his wild concoction of multiple "fictional"... biographical... background... demographics... has created a protagonist... as unique as an individual snow flake. But in no way... can the central character... ever be described... as being as pure as the newly fallen snow. Born Pietro Brnwa... later known as "Bearclaw" Brnwa... and still later... once he enters the witness protection program... he's known as Peter Brown. And if you want to be really technical... even later... he's known as Dr. Peter Brown.

Pietro was raised by his Jewish Grandparents until they were murdered, and then the parent's of his best childhood friend... "Skinflick"... raised him. The fact that "Skinflick's" Father... David Locano... was a Mafia lawyer... greased the skids... that lead Pietro... into the life of a Mafia hit man. (It also... probably didn't hurt that Pietro's childhood role models were Batman and Charles Bronson in "DEATH WISH".) What is absolutely mesmerizing about this fast-paced story... is that it constantly shifts from the present time... where Pietro... aka... "Bearclaw"... aka... Peter Brown... is now Doctor Peter Brown... and the author who is a REAL-LIFE-INTERN at UCSF... spews out real life medical terms (with definitions... when he feels they're needed at the bottom of the book pages) coated with raucous "black-humor"... and then shifts... to Mafia "hit" flashbacks... with gruesome detail... all with tongue-placed-firmly-in-cheek... without missing a beat... on the medical side... or the Mafia murder mayhem side! If that isn't tantalizing enough... interspersed within these two realms... is a trip to Poland for revenge against Nazi loyalists... that turned his Grandparents in during the war... resulting in them being imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. In a historically correct... and compelling... presentation... the author presents details about the death camps... with the same type of notes on the bottom of the page as he provides on medical terms. What a remarkable literary juggling act... balancing medicine... Mafia hits... and Holocaust history... all the while racing full speed ahead... with an action-packed... gripping... "dark-humor"... drenched... thriller. If all this isn't enough... we also have shark attacks... and the reader is left still wanting more! Thank goodness the author is already working on his second novel. Josh Bazell has hit a tape measure homerun on his first at bat!

What a riot this book is! I mean wet your pants, milk laughed out your nose black comedy!

I loved this character - Pietro "Bearclaw" Brwna. Friend, hitman, lover, part of the Witness Protection program, grandson, intern.

Dr. Peter Brown is a great though unconventional doctor, just like he was a super hitman for the Mob. This book is too funny - from the first line until the very end. I loved everything about the book, including all the very funny footnotes, and am so glad the second book in the series is finally coming out - Wild Thing in February 2012.

Beat the Reaper is a fun read. It reminds me of some people from New York who I know and like -- a little overwhelming at first but, once you make the adjustment, fun to spend time with. The book is loaded with foul language along with a generous serving of drugs, explicit sex and violence that could turn some people off. But beyond that it's a good, well-plotted story, and a fun mix of medicine and the mob. In it's most memorable scene, there is even an autofibulectomy (removal of one's own fibula). I came away from the book not only entertained, but feeling like I learned something about disease (uterine tissue migrating into the leg), human anatomy/physiology (the fibula actually supports no weight), and the history of the mafia in New York City (everyone outside of the hills of Virginia probably already knows that they ran the garbage industry). I also learned that the LD50 (lethal dose for 50% of people) for defenestration (being thrown from a window) is 5 stories! These facts may not be true, but the pleasure I take in my new-found apparent knowledge is very real. And Josh Bazell is an actual doctor, so maybe some of it is true.

This is a quick read, and is unlikely to change your life (hopefully). But it's a good as a summer read or an escape from a bad day.

I really ate up every direction Bazell went and each aspect of this novel, the high, the low, the footnotes, the action, the tawdy. Any parts that might have momentarily sagged bore more than enough fruit in later pages. I'll be buying the next book in hardcover, and at 240 pages it too looks like it is nothing but prime cuts of insight and "new to me" info.