At Gillette Trauma Hospital, patients of Dr. Runyon have been dying--all victims of a pulmonary embolus, a fatal blood clot. Journalist David Airoway has been investigating--until he ends up a patient. And now his sister, a surgeon, must expose a deadly conspiracy, before Dr. Runyon takes care of her brother, too.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing,
By A. Vegan (Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Embolus (Paperback)
I'm a big fan of medical thrillers and I was so disappointed with this one. This book was 346 pages long and really, it could have been half, if not a quarter of that. The story behind it is good...seemingly healthy patients are dying from a pulmonary embolus even though they had a special medical device inserted into them. Sounds like a good story but oddly the author doesn't even go into any detail about it. It's more of Whodunnit with a bunch of bumbling cops. Two thumbs down.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Quick Beach Read,
By
This review is from: Embolus (Paperback)
I discovered this book in the bookcase of the vacation residence where I am staying, and since i like medical thrillers I decided I'd read it without first looking at any reviews despite never having heard about the author. The three star rating accurately summarizes my conclusion, a passable,not great, book. The story had more potential than the author was able to realize in his narration.
David Airoway is a well known Washington, DC investigative journalist who is approached with intimations of criminal behavior and the resultant deaths at the elite Gillette Trauma center. However, his nervous source will provide no corroborating evidence, and suddenly bolts from the meeting in which he is making the allegations. When David is admitted to the Gillette ER where his sister Dr. Alexandra Caffey works, she suddenly recognizes the "john Doe" patient despite his massive injuries and refuses to believe the MPD assumption that he was an attempted suicide. As she struggles to piece together the recent events in David's life in order to untangle the mystery of who attempted to kill him and why, additional deaths occur and she is racing both to keep David safe until he can emerge from his coma and also eventually to avoid the danger in which she places herself, which is foreshadowed to the reader well before she realizes it. The story moves relatively swiftly, but with very uneven character and plot development. The main positives are the medical knowledge of the author (that element of the plot is ingenious and well expounded) and the underlying storyline. However, the author appears to want to appeal to as broad a range of readers as posible, so he also introduces a romantic element, the politics of nationalized health care, the frequent alliances between the major medical device companies and the physicians who use and promote their products, the politics of the hospital industry and difficult role of the hospital administrators, and a hired assassin. To his credit, Dr. Birken, the author, keeps the action moving, and several of the plot twists were clever enough that i did not guess them and interesting enough that I wanted to know the outcome. Also, as opposed to many medical thrillers (such as some by Michael Palmer and Robin Cook), the storyline was balanced enough regarding some of the ethical issues and debating points about government health care that i did not feel that the author was using his story as a pulpit from which to preach me a sermon regarding his views. Rather, my summary is that the story would have ben greatly improved if he had imparted more of his medical knowledge to the reader and also somewhat simplified the storyline, perhaps with regard to Alexandra's personal life. i generally try to avoid writing neutral reviews, but in this case decided that was how I felt after the positives and the negatives were balanced. It was an easy read, and the story was compelling enough so i wanted to finish the book, which I read in less than two days while listening to the nearby ocean waves. My biggest regret is that given how ingenious the plot was, the four or five star potential was unrealized. The author's editor should have realized the book's potential and told him to rework it, rather than consigning it the world of read and discard paperbacks. (Although I was glad that a previous resident of this house decided to leave it here for other vacationers.) So, while this is indeed a "medical thriller", it is more of a detective procedural which occurs in a hospital and where the detective is an M.D.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Medical Thriller,
By Holly Leigh Neville "HN" (florida) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Embolus (Paperback)
The third book by this author, and this one is the best! It is captivating and suspenseful. I did not put it down until I had finished it! Very authentic in the presentation of medical material which adds to the thrill and excitement of the book.
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