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First, Do No Harm

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Martin Firestone is in his mid-twenties when he decides to make a career shift. He is accepted to medical school and tells his father, artist Leo Firestone. But Leo explodes with anger at Martin's announcement, demands he meet him for lunch where much of the novel takes place.

At lunch Leo Firestone tells when he acted as an extern for his physician father, Dr. Samuel Firestone during the summer of 1943. It was the summer he lost his boyhood, and his life changed forever.

Dr. Samuel Firestone practiced in Hobart, New Jersey and was considered a doctor whom everyone could count on no matter the emergency or time of day. An excellent diagnostician, Dr. Firestone knew the community's needs and secrets.

While working for his father, Leo learns about black-market adoptions, abortion, murder, his mother's drug addiction as well as breaking the law while the country is at war. With his childhood friend, Harmony, Leo investigates the activities of the scrapyard owned by evil Oscar, helpful Martin -- and the parts of his father's life that trouble him.

It is what happens after Leo finished his story that brings resolution to a lifetime of regret and sadness.

Karp's prose brings Hobart and the era alive. I will definitely read Karp's other works. Armchair Interviews says the story is compelling and the plot intriguing. The twists and turns will draw you in to capture and keep your attention

"First, Do No Harm," by Larry Karp, begins with a choice: Martin Firestone, son of powerful and eccentric artist Leo Firestone, announces his decision to leave his career in computers and enter medical school. To Martin's shock and amazement, his father is furious, and insists that Martin lunch with him the next day. He has a story to tell him, he says. And so he does.
Martin's grandfather, Leo tells him, was Dr. Samuel Firestone, a legendary diagnostician and healer in their small New Jersey city. Leo's story begins the summer he turns sixteen, when his father offers him the opportunity to work as his extern. Their work takes them throughout the city, and Leo witnesses his father's remarkable abilities. Leo also becomes aware of many mysterious connections between the gifted physician--the Sorcerer--and the owner of a family-owned scrap metal business--the Junkman. As the summer progresses, the connections multiply: a heart attack that doesn't look like a heart attack, a blackmail threat, too many "nieces" having their babies. Leo begins to suspect that his father is involved in covering up a murder, and more. He decides to investigate, along with his best friend, and as the investigation plays out, disaster ensues.
"First, Do No Harm" is a father's story, told to his son, as well as a son's story, told about his father. But within these two stories are individual histories, of an era, of a city, and of another father and his son. And the final story spans three generations and two families--the Sorcerer's and the Junkman's--and the choices they made along the way. Most of these choices were made for the best of reasons. And what followed from them was often good: lives were saved, babies found loving adoptive parents, young women were enabled to live productive lives. But these same choices spawned great harm, as well: abortions, addiction, black marketing of metal and of drugs, and finally, violent death. Martin's grandfather, a larger than life character, practiced medicine on an heroic scale--but with heroism, came hubris, that pride that drove him to push the Hippocratic oath beyond its limits, redefining civil and human laws on his own terms.
The writing here is first-rate. The dual narratives proceed clearly, and the cadence is assured. A physician himself, Karp conveys the depth and scope of Samuel's skills with authority. The sense of place--and time--is vivid; it wouldn't be a Larry Karp book without music, and the background music of the narrative is played on a variety of radios, all playing the music of 1943, in the cars and homes and offices the reader sees. There a music box, too, that connects Leo himself to the Junkman just as Leo's father was linked to his nemesis, the Junkman's father. It also connects Leo to a girl named Harmony, his first love and "soul mate;" surely her name is no coincidence.
The characters are equally vivid--they speak in their own voices, and they tell their own stories, from Leo the artist to Murray the junkman to the characters within each narrative. And all these narratives dovetail with one another, like the music that permeates the book. As the several narratives unfold, the truths become more painful and more violent, until, in the end, a weary Martin concludes that "With the best intentions, the Sorcerer and the Junkman paved twin highways to hell."
Two of Leo's paintings frame the conclusion of the novel. One stays with Leo, and the other, an unfinished work, passes on to Martin, to complete with his own life. What he has learned has been devastating, but out of that devastation has come resolution, and a possibility of a greater final good.
"First, Do No Harm" is Larry Karp's fourth, and finest, novel. The first three, featuring amateur sleuth Dr. Thomas Purdue, are set in New York City, in the world of antique music boxes, and are engaging, intelligent, and intricately plotted. They share the same vivid sense of place that's found in "First, Do No Harm." Karp lives in Seattle, where he is working on his next novel.

Martin Firestone can't figure out why his father, the eccentric painter Leo Firestone, is throwing a fit. All Martin did was tell his dad he'd been accepted to medical school. Then, Leo tells Martin a story about his own father, Dr. Samuel Firestone, an extraordinarily gifted doctor and living legend in the small city of Hobart, NJ, but a man with a serious character flaw. During the summer of 1943, while Leo worked as Samuel's extern, he witnessed some highly questionable behavior. When Leo decided his father was covering up a murder, he and his girlfriend, followed a trail of clues to find the truth. By the time they realized they were in far over their sixteen-year-old heads, it was too late to call off the investigation. But there are loose threads in Leo's story. Martin picks them up, and sixty years after the fact, goes snooping in Hobart. And like his father, he comes away with a whole lot more junk than he'd bargained for.

This is a terrific book that I just couldn't put down. The writing is powerful, the characters dynamic and the story fascinating. The author pulls you into the story with the first paragraph and gradually peels away the layers on a sixty year old mystery. The more you read the more you want to know. This book is not only about the destination (the solution of the mystery) it's also all about the journey to get there. It's a grand journey with a compelling ending and a fascinating look into the world of the past when doctors were perceived as gods who in the end were just as human as everyone else.

If you're expecting another `music box mystery' from Larry Karp, you'll not find it here, although there certainly is an abundance of mystery, and a music box, just for good measure. This is a stand alone book, not part of his well-received series featuring Dr. Thomas Purdue.

Actually, this book is an almost total departure from the prior books of Karp, in that most of the action takes place in New Jersey, in the early years of W W II. It's rough and rugged, and entirely compelling. You might find the story hard to get into, but once there, putting it down is even more difficult.

Every family has a mystery somewhere, and not all of them see the light of day. It was only a fluke, really, that let Martin Firestone discover his family's mystery, and thanks to his persistence, we can share, and learn from it, as he did. Martin is twenty-eight, and a computer wizard. Suddenly, without warning, and no really good reason why, he decides to change his direction and become a doctor. Telling his father-the 76-year-old Leo, a world-famous artist- of this decision opens the past to both of them.

For Leo's father was a doctor. Samuel Firestone was far more than just a doctor, however. He was a brilliant diagnostician, an insightful healer, a man who both believed in and mistrusted his God, and who cared for people, regardless of age, race, color or ability to pay. His mission was to make folks feel better, and he did this in any way possible, even if not always entirely legal.

The rough, tough world of war-time scrapyards in Hobart, New Jersey, alternates with more civilized sections, but always the dirty, low-down side of the business is prominent. The young Leo spends his days in happy innocence until a music box found in the attic becomes the catalyst that will eventurally bring everything out into the open, exposing too many secrets better left hidden. In one devastating week, Leo's world comes tumbling down around him.

Now, fifty years later, Martin unintentionally opens the door to Leo's past, and using his own modern skills to offset Leo's artistic skills and Samuel's intuitive ones, all the old skeletons are finally laid to rest.

The nitty-gritty world of the young Leo is hard to inhabit, even for a short time, but the language and the violence is never gratuitous. This is an astonishing story of a supposedly kinder and gentler era, which it really wasn't at all. You won't soon forget Leo--and Harmony, the young girl who wanted only to be his companion, not his shadow--nor Leo's parents, Samuel and Ramona, the one patient beyond Sam's ability to cure. I'm glad I read it; I think most people would be.

They gave me a stolen library book from Durham North Carolina and it was the wrong First Do No Harm...

Karp's latest, a departure from his Thomas Perdue novels, is billed as a mystery and there is a mystery here, but the real story is one of 1940s medicine: issues, ethics, and a big personality in a small town.

It begins when Martin Firestone tells his eccentric artist father, Leo that he's been accepted to medical school and his father blows a gasket. He demands that Martin meet him for lunch, where he delivers the meat of the novel: a long, detailed narrative fueled by numerous manhattans. Leo's story covers the summer of 1943, when he joined his doctor father as a sort of apprentice. It was a summer that changed the course of his life.

A perceptive, observant teenager, Leo admires his father, Samuel, whose powers of diagnosis and healing are legendary in Hobart, NJ. But Samuel, wholly dedicated to his patients, willing to make house calls any time of the day or night, is nevertheless unable to cure his wife of her drug addiction, an affliction that goes unmentioned in the household.

Accompanying his father, Leo soon learns there's more to doctoring than medicine. Samuel's judgments about treatments often have a personal component and his personal judgments often run counter to Leo's less flexible moral standards.

But when his dad lies to him about a dead junkman's cause of death, Leo begins to suspect him of something more sinister than unorthodox adoption arrangements and excessive leniency towards drunken, negligent parents. Enlisting the aid of his musical friend Harmony, Leo worms his way into the daily business of the junkyard, whose owner (the dead man's adoptive father) nurses a deep hatred of his father.

Leo's absorbing narrative is richly shaded with the details of small-town, wartime life, the myriad secrets kept and shared by a community, the moral dilemmas of a strong-willed man, and the black and white judgments of youthful inexperience. And when it's completed, Martin, following in his father's footsteps, worries at the loose ends in his story and travels back two generations to unravel the still-festering secrets.

While Leo's narrative is the well-written heart of this novel, it's also its only real problem. It's too detailed and finely written to be a brooding man's drunken ramble to his son. I kept wondering why Leo couldn't have come to Martin with a box of pages, saying, "here's a story I should have shared with you years ago," or something like that. Though I didn't find this a small flaw, it didn't stop me reading this compelling novel, and it likely won't stop most readers.

This is not a classic mystery, but it is an absolutely remarkable piece of writing. I became completely immersed in the characters and their story. It is poignant, engrossing, tragic and truly excellent. Be prepared to give it your undivided attention as you'll want to do nothing less.