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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent second novel, October 20, 2007
I'm not usually a fan of medical thrillers, but gave Joshua Spanogle's Isolation Ward a try and was glad I did. This guy can write! Hero Nate McCormick is a great flawed protagonist with a unique voice and someone who is easy to identify with. In Flawless, McCormick is back and Spanogle has managed to avoid the sophomore curse, returning with a novel just as good (if not better) than his first.
Nate has relocated to the West Coast to pursue a relationship with the girlfriend he reconnected with during his initial case (chronicled in Ward). He's jobless and hasn't found an apartment and his aimless state has started to wear on the burgeoning relationship. Into this state of things comes an old friend from his student days who wants Nate's help with something. But before Nate can find out what it is, his friend Murph is murdered, along with his wife and two children, plunging Nate into a complicated mystery swirling around a biotech company in the South San Francisco hills, coupled with Chinese gangsters and a series of photographs of women and men, faces disfigured by an agressive facial cancer.
Nate is warned off, his girlfriend is attacked, and several of the people in the photographs are killed in a variety of shocking ways, but McCormick just can't give up, feeling he owes something to the friend he lost track of. This is an excellent, fast-moving novel with three-dimensional, believable characters. Nate suffers for his investigation and his feelings of rage and helplessness are palpable. And his life continues to develop on the sidelines, in the manner of the best current detective fiction. Spanogle is a truly talented writer and I'm very much looking forward to his next novel. Flawless is very highly recommended!
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
3.25 stars: Fun page-turner for Robin Cook fans, July 20, 2008
This review is from: Flawless (Mass Market Paperback)
I purchased this off-the-shelf because Booklist on the cover promised it "Could give Michael Chricton a run for his money. Skilled storytelling" and because it sounded like a unique concept - "Perfect patients, perfect victims, a medical nightmare come true".
With a likeable, but flawed main character who uses humor to offset stress, page-turning action, a host of REALLY, REALLY bad guys and bureaucratically challenged government agents, there's no doubt that the "Skilled storytelling." part is true.
There are a few flaws that keep this book for me from being more than just a slightly above average, fun page-turner.
1. Over the top characters and action - it's fun to read over-the-top sometimes, but while I liked and despised appropriate characters I never really cared when something good or bad happened to any of them.
2. The cover and title of the book (not to mention the blurb on the back) gives away what it takes Nate our hero - 289 pages to figure out. Fortunately, enough page-turning action and a sense of how you don't really know how it will all play out keeps you reading up to that point. It would be better if you didn't know exactly what every clue meant, so long before him.
3. Big over-the-top ending. It's a pet peeve of mine lately - how decent thrillers turn into cartoonish VERY, VERY BAD GUYS against GOOD GUY with impossible odds doing things that stretch far, far beyond the believable.
Bottom Line: Spanogle weaves a decent tale that will keep you turning the pages. He's not the next Micheal Chricton, though. He's more like the next Robin Cook - with his fun, over-the-top medical thrillers. And, if you like Robin Cook medical thrillers, the more you're bound to like this one - it's right up there with many of his.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
TAUT, TENSE, THRILL-PACKED READING, September 4, 2007
If you want a voice performer who can deliver terse, edgy lines that keep you listening and can sustain suspense with well chosen pauses, look for Scott Brick's name on an audio book. That's not news as he seems to be sought after by almost every audio publisher, and has been named Narrator of the Year. His take on protagonist Nate McCormick is perfection as Nate sometimes spouts off unwisely or verbally flagellates himself because he can't put the pieces of this crime/medical puzzle together fast enough.
Once a detective for the Centers for Disease Control, Nate has decided to turn his life around with a new job, new location and, of course, the beautiful Brooke. But, at the outset there's trouble beginning with a a heated argument then the murder of an old friend and the discovery of shocking photographs - pictures of the horribly disfigured, women with their faces covered with tumors. As if this suffering were not enough, it soon becomes obvious that these same women are being murdered in an effort to cover up the devastating effects of a cosmetic drug.
We learned with Isolation Ward that medical student Joshua Spanogle knows his territory well, and he mines it again with chilling results in this story of the havoc wrought when organized crime and medicine partner.
- Gail Cooke
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