Customer Reviews

Death At the Medical Board

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ballantine Books, the publisher of DEATH AT THE MEDICAL BOARD, marketed the book with misleading cover art and a misleading cover blurb ("Which Mask Hid a Cold-Blooded Killer?"). The primary murder victim is a young woman who has just been given a physical, NOT a man who was killed on an operating table by a masked surgical team, as the cover strongly suggests.

Published in 1964 but set in England during World War II, this "medical mystery" written by a female doctor is NOT a fair-play puzzle story and is NOT a thrilling crime-and-espionage story. It is a ploddingly slow tale of a doctor's investigation of the medical-board murder and its connection (if any) to a German spy network that is trying to sabotage the British war effort. Sandwiched in, is a second investigation of a second murder--that of the first victim's husband.

Virtually all of the "investigation" of the primary murder turns out to be a waste of the doctor's time--and the reader's. The unsuspected culprit is discovered completely by chance, when that person makes a very stupid mistake near the end. The killer's specific motivation for the murder is very lame (based on a very far-fetched coincidence), and the killer's general motivation for helping the Germans is left totally unexplained. Perhaps worst of all, the sabotage activity of the German spy network (explained on page 188) is incredibly stupid and preposterously inefficient. (I cannot say more about it without creating a "spoiler" here.)

My two-star rating essentially gives this book a "D" letter grade.