A Feast of Carrion: A Novel of Crime [Hardcover]

Keith McCarthy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003

Forensic science and law enforcement do not prove to share the same conclusions in this darkly plotted debut novel by Keith McCarthy, himself a practicing pathologist. His suspenseful and ingeniously twisted tale opens inside the walls of the venerable St. Benjamin’s Museum of Pathology, where any death would send shock waves through the academic community. But the death of Nikki Exner is far from ordinary. Not only raped and murdered, she has been grotesquely executed. That the museum employs a formerly convicted rapist and drug addict, Tim Bilroth, leads the police easily to their prime suspect, and Bilroth’s suicide while in their custody serves only to confirm his guilt. But Helena Flemming, the Bilroth family’s solicitor, is not so sure, and to help her determine Tim’s innocence, she calls upon former crack forensic pathologist John Eisenmenger. He performs a second autopsy on the victim’s drawn-and-quartered body, and his findings stand almost completely at odds with the police department’s medical examiner. As Eisenmenger and Flemming set out to discover who really killed Nikki Exner, they uncover a trail littered with drugs, blackmail, sexual favors, and suspects, and they fear that they and the police may not be on the same side.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers who don't get enough strong forensic medicine from the likes of Patricia Cornwell or Kathy Reichs, and who need another print fix between TV episodes of the various incarnations of CSI, will welcome this first book in a new series from a British pathologist. Beginning with the savage murder of a young female medical student who's been hung, drawn and quartered inside a famous old museum of pathology, and going on through enough autopsies and postmortem probings of body parts to fill several medical textbooks, McCarthy lays on the grisly detail, with a practicing doctor's detached eye. He's also adept at showing how the internal politics of police and pathology clash: his main character, John Eisenmenger, now in charge of the museum, is a former forensic pathologist with a checkered past-which comes out when an attractive woman lawyer, Helena Flemming, working for the family of the leading murder suspect, persuades him to redo the original autopsy. But even Flemming, a seasoned criminal lawyer obviously destined to join Eisenmenger in a second volume in the series, has her limits. "I'm not quite as clinical as you are," she tells him when he discusses details of the crime over lunch. "Perhaps in time, but for the present I'd rather eat my lunch without considering the grossest aspects of human depravity." Those with weak stomachs should take heed.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Nikki Exner is found murdered and mutilated in St. Benjamin's Museum of Anatomy and Pathology. Police inspector Beverley Wharton is quick to arrest a young museum employee with a rape conviction in his past, and the suspect commits suicide while in custody. His family hires solicitor Helena Flemming to prove their son was wrongly arrested, and she persuades former forensic pathologist John Eisenmenger to perform a second autopsy on the victim. Eisenmenger's results differ dramatically from those of the medical examiner, but the police consider the case closed. Flemming, Eisenmenger, and former cop Bob Johnson investigate themselves, discovering incompetence, corruption, and denial in both police and academic circles. This engrossing debut interweaves forensic details throughout as layers are peeled away to discover the complex truth behind Nikki's murder. Characters are all damaged people in a story where corruption goes unpunished. Readers who enjoy Patricia Cornwell or Kathy Reichs will appreciate the forensic details, but the pacing is far more leisurely here. Sue O'Brien
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786712228
• ISBN-13: 978-0786712229
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,222,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Real people with real flaws and vices, January 10, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: A Feast of Carrion: A Novel of Crime (Hardcover)

This is a challenging book to read. The vocabulary sometimes requires a dictionary. Some, but very little, is quite graphic and appropriately graphic--nothing gratuitous. The author takes the world as it is: with incompetent cops, often caring only for promotion and sexual comforts; intelligent professors and doctors doing bad things, unalloyed bad things. The story moves along at a steady pace. This can be read like a Patricia C. forensic book, but would make little sense. This first novel educated me, thrilled me, entertained me, but most of all immersed me in the grease and grime of life and made me look unflinchingly at some truths about the human condition, which many myster readers would like to ignore. Not since I read Connelly's The Poet have I been so overwhelmed by mystery/suspense story. Essential reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How it all began., August 4, 2006

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Feast of Carrion: A Novel of Crime (Hardcover)

Having read all of Keith McCarthy's subsequent thrillers, I finally felt impelled to pick up "A Feast of Carrion," the first and most intense installment in the series. McCarthy introduces British pathologist John Eisenmenger, a compassionate and sensitive individual who is unlucky in love. He has already been through a divorce, and he currently lives with an unstable and often enraged woman named Marie, who is not only jealous, but also paranoid and needy. Previously, John suffered a breakdown after witnessing the terrible death of a little girl named Tamsin at the hand of her mother, and he has never been able to forget the indelible image of this dying youngster. Her face haunts him and he even visits her pathetic grave to grieve from time to time.

John's life is about to get even more unsettled. He works in St. Benjamin's Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, where a crime takes place that is so gruesome that it almost defies description. A gorgeous medical student named Nikki Exner is found hanged and grotesquely mutilated in the museum. Who could have been sick enough to do such a thing to this young woman? Sleazy but sly Beverley Wharton, an ambitious Chief Inspector who has slept her way to the top, is convinced that the assistant curator of the museum, Tim Bilroth, formerly known as Tim Bowman, is the guilty party. After all, Bowman had motive, means and opportunity. He has a prison record for indecent assault and rape, and he is a drug dealer who knew Exner well. Relying on the results of a poorly done autopsy as well as her copper's intuition, Wharton arrests Bowman on suspicion of killing Exner. Subsequently, Bowman's parents hire a solicitor named Helena Flemming to clear their son's name. Helena asks John Eisenmenger to conduct a second autopsy on Exner in an attempt to find out what really happened. John is reluctant to get involved in forensic pathology again, but he is attracted to Helena, and he agrees to take another look at the Exner case.

"A Feast of Carrion" is a gory and unflinching novel, filled with excruciatingly detailed information on body parts and autopsies. It is also compulsively readable and highly literate. McCarthy's descriptive writing is fabulous; he captures a mood, a scene, or a character's personality with a few well-chosen words. His sardonic humor is often hilarious, and the author dissects each person in his cast as skillfully as Eisenmenger dissects corpses with his scalpel. McCarthy's conclusion is a cliffhanger and then some. My one quibble is the plot, which is incredibly intricate. There are too many perpetrators committing adultery, exchanging favors for sex, falsifying records, earning money through blackmail, and much more, requiring a scorecard to keep track of them all. The novel also features a host of individuals who are physically and mentally ill, a bit too many to be believed. However, the dialogue is top-notch, and the forensic information could not be more graphic, for those who enjoy that sort of thing. I advise you to read this book on an EMPTY stomach.

I urge readers who are new to McCarthy to read the novels in order. The author provides little back-story, and you will not understand how the characters evolved if you read the series out of order. Now that I have the whole picture, I understand a bit more about how and why John and Helena's inner demons have tormented them for so many years.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Articulate Debut Thriller, September 9, 2005

By 

A Discerning Reader (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Feast of Carrion: A Novel of Crime (Hardcover)

A Feast of Carrion is a well written tale of lust, perversion, and murder in a pathology department in the UK. McCarthy is a splendid wordsmith, and his dry and witty writing style are well suited to the storyline and setting. Happily, this starts off an entertaining trio of books starring the nomad forensic pathologist John Eisenmenger and his lovely attorney-assistant Helena Flemming.

In this tale, a gruesome murder is committed and displayed in the hallowed center of the anatomy and pathology museum on a medical school campus. The police, and later our protagonists, investigate what seems more and more like an inside job--not a paranoid schizophrenic on PCP who broke into the museum to harm a helpless medical student.

Strong points: the writing, the writing, and the writing. Also, the characters are deftly drawn and handled well. McCarthy's thoughtful portraits set up a nice cast of characters for the books to come in this series. I certainly think the medical expertise helps me enjoy this gruesome caper a bit more, although naming most of the characters and street names after historically famous medical people can sometimes be a bit distracting (if you have a medical background and recognize them...).

The weaknesses in this story are few but real. There are too many deaths/suicides to be quite believeable, and there are too many unethical and immoral professors of pathology to be believable (though perhaps Dr. McCarthy, a pathologist himself, gets a kick out of doing this!). Overall, this is a strong debut in a writing style not too far removed from Reginald Hill--thoughtful, educated readers will enjoy it if they have the stomach for the anatomic details.