Customer Reviews

The Inquisitor: A Medical Thriller

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a registered nurse and thriller enthusiast, I was eager to read Peter Clement's 'The Inquisitor'. It is the first book by Clement that I have read.
As far as keeping your attention, I totally think the author nailed it. There are numerous twists and turns in the plot to make you read one more page before going to bed, and then another page...
The medical information is fairly accurate although there were a few times reading it I thought to myself, "Has he worked in a hospital lately?" Some of the terms he uses seem antiquated but once I got over that, I enjoyed the book immensely.
A last note is that the author generally depicts nurses as a group of not-too-high-of-calibre people who surely are lower than doctors. However, he does balance this out somewhat with a few nurse characters who are liked and well-respected in the book.
This all said, I definitely recommend this book!

Peter Clement might be considered a wonderful novelist when it comes to medical thrillers, but I found his work to be full of cliches. He also switches point of view between first and third person which I found to be very jarring, completely taking me out of the story.

He tries the red herring approach, but that doesn't work either because the threads he weaves aren't all that believable to me. It's true he has the medical background, but he characterization felt stiff. His characters were flat, plus he told more than showed the action...or he did both.

I don't want to be told he's angry, I want to be shown. Also, his attempts at showing romance, I felt, were clumsy. I've read several books by Michael Palmer, Robin Cook, and a few other authors, and when I placed one of Palmers and Clements side by side, I couldn't help but notice that I felt as if I was peering over Palmer's characters' shoulders whereas with Clement felt the need to explain absolutely everything. Very annoying. One last thing, he needs to keep his exclamation points in check.

St Paul's Hospital in Buffalo, NY is under seige by the SARS virus. Staff and patients alike have to be gowned and protected from an invisible menace.

Death tolls are rising. It's expected people will die at St. Paul's no matter how hard the docs fight against it. But, Dr. Earl Garnet, the new VP/Medical and Chief of the ER is seeing patterns he doesn't like. Terminal patients in the Palliative Care Unit are passing sooner than they are supposed to--and some who are not dying are reporting Near Death Experiences. Digging just a little further, he discovers many of those patients report a person hovering over their beds asking them questions as they are dying.

So, what's happening? Do they have an Angel of Mercy euthanizing their patients or is their resident NDE researcher engaging in some extracurricular activity?

What I really like about this story is while Clement lays out the clues, there are so many hospital workers tied in the situation and guilty for reasons both good and bad. This book not only provides a good read, but gives the reader some pause to consider paincare and the end of life. Very well done and worth looking into more of Clement's stories to find out what else Dr. Earl Garnet has experienced.

Peter Clement has been writing medical thrillers for a number of years, utilizing his experience as a hospital emergency room physician to bring an edge-of-the-seat feeling to the events that he describes so succinctly and realistically. Clement does not pull any punches in his descriptions of his medical procedures, and his novels require our undivided attention. Always a good writer, he has polished his rough edges to the point where he is becoming an A-list thriller writer. His latest, THE INQUISITOR, featuring Dr. Earl Garnet, firmly ensconces his position there.

THE INQUISITOR opens with a terminally ill cancer patient being relentlessly questioned by a voice, whispering in the dark, asking her to describe what she sees during the final moments of her life. As the story unfolds Garnet begins to notice a pattern --- a cluster, if you will --- of deaths at St. Paul's Hospital, which leads him to suspect that someone on staff may be prematurely terminating the lives of patients. The hospital and its staff, already stressed by the SARS epidemic, is at a breaking point, and virtually everyone --- even trusted members of Garnet's own emergency room staff --- is a suspect. What Garnet does not suspect is that his investigation, initiated with the intention of protecting the innocent, is directly putting members of his staff at risk --- and his wife, pregnant with their second child, is ultimately in the greatest danger of all.

THE INQUISITOR is, quite frankly, impossible to put down. It is by far Clement's best work, a heart-racing thriller that leaves the reader guessing the identity, and motive, of a diabolical murderer until almost the very end.

For those readers heretofore unfamiliar with Clement, and Garnet, THE INQUISITOR will make true believers of them. Recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Dr. Earl Garnet is back in "The Inquisitor," Peter Clement's new medical thriller. Earl has had his problems with the medical establishment in the past, but he is now in a position to call some of the shots himself. Garnet is not only head of the emergency room at Buffalo's St. Paul's Hospital, but he is also vice president of the medical department, second only to the CEO of the hospital in power. He is a dedicated and compassionate doctor who is married to his beautiful colleague, Janet, an OB-GYN awaiting the birth of their second child.

Garnet's problems have not evaporated since Clement's last book. St. Paul's is close to the Canadian border, and the hospital has SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases from tourists traveling back and forth between the United States and Canada. Everyone, including patients, must wear masks in order to prevent the spread of infection. The SARS scare has made everyone edgy and frightened, especially since some of St. Paul's medical personnel have died from the dreaded disease.

"The Inquisitor" of the title is a psychotic individual who is obsessed with finding out from dying people what they see when they "pass over" to the other side. This person sneaks into the hospital rooms of extremely sick patients and brings them close to death in order to record their final words. Unfortunately, he or she can't always bring them back, and some of them die before their time. The "psycho" segments, told in the first person, in which this crazed person talks about his or her actions and motivations, are heavy-handed and way over the top. These portions of the book do not mesh well with the lively dialogue and light-hearted banter that make the rest of the novel so readable.

Along with the heroic Garnet, "The Inquisitor" features a wide and varied cast of characters. Jane Simmons, known as J. S., is a terrific emergency room nurse who is content on the job but unhappy with her personal life. Although Dr. Stewart Deloram is a miracle worker in the ICU, his colleagues dislike him for taking offense at the slightest insult. Father Jimmy Fitzpatrick is a warm and amiable priest who goads Earl into assisting terminal patients who get insufficient medication to alleviate their pain. Earl orders extra meds for a cancer patient, and she subsequently dies from a morphine overdose. Did Earl's interference lead to this woman's death?

Clement captures the ambience of a hospital very well. He explains medical terminology clearly and keeps the book moving at a fast pace. The author includes quite a few red herrings to throw the reader off the scent. The ending, however, is awkward, with too many crises occurring one after another, and too many illogical twists and turns that lead to an overly pat conclusion. In spite of these flaws, "The Inquisitor" is a workmanlike novel whose strengths are its lively characters and its realistic portrayal of how doctors function in a hospital setting.

Individual tastes vary widely as far as books.. I certainly enjoyed this book & so did my wife. It lived up to being a "medical thriller", & will keep u turning the pages til the very last one.

Imagine this scenario: You are researching near-death experiences to determine what is beyond life. To save time and by-pass a potential no from a patient or her family to participate in your experiment, you work under the cover of late-night darkness and stealth. You bring a patient to the yawning mouth of death and insistently demand what the patient sees. Sometimes the answer is not the bright-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel. Sometimes the answer is a horrifying individual experience--so horrifying you immediately bring the patient back to life, but you have tape recorded that response. After all, you are the Inquisitor.

Wouldn't that make a great premise for "The Inquisitor: A Medical Thriller?" The title leads the reader to that conclusion, but that's not the case in this novel. The novel is not really about the Inquisitor.

Another major flaw is Clement's very annoying way of using the omniscient viewpoint but in a very controlled manner. He takes us into the character's minds when they are on stage, but limits what we are allowed to learn when it suits the story.

So, why four stars? "The Inquisitor: A Medical Thriller" is a very fast-paced story filled with characters we come to care about. We learn the inner workings of the ER in a large hospital and the conflicts amongst staff. First, there's Dr. Earl Garnet, head of ER and newly-appointed vice president/medical. His wife and equal is Janet, a highly successful OB-Gyn, who herself is pregnant.

Other characters include the chaplain Jimmy, interning for priesthood; Jane Simmons, a top-notch ER nurse; Thomas Briggs, an outstanding ER intern and Jane's love interest. The list goes on to include the doctor studying near-death experiences, another who can bring ER patients through the most extraordinary injuries.

Then there are problems with life insurance, pain modifications, diligence of duty, the human element in doctoring.

But the most disturbing aspect of this fast-paced novel is the medical personnel responsible for harming other doctors in order to exact revenge. The intent to take life goes against everything a doctor stands for, but the reasons point to a disordered mind. Perhaps this is the real inquisitor.

Peter Clement writes entertaining and even educational medical thrillers, to be sure, but his overuse of writerly control is both distracting and annoying. He needs to let his characters have more freedom and not be just puppets out of his very creative mind.

(Note: I have very carefully written this review so as not to reveal any of the mysteries in the novel!)

Such a pleasure to discover an author who cares about his characters. Thanks, Peter, for writing well. You're in the top five, along with Michael Connelly and Robert Crais.

This was my first book by Peter Clement, it was great. Grabs your imagination from the first page and holds it to the last! I have been a Robin Cook fan for a long time, Mr. Clements is giving him serious competition.

Dr. Earl Garnet in this book uncovers some amazing situations through the hospital which lead to various functions of the hospital, and how they are able to handle cases that come into the hospital. The hospital administrator is able to work in connection with Earl to look for some of these disturbing, yet interesting adventures that helps brings things to a closure. This book is recommended for anyone who is wnating an exhilirating, yet mysterious book to read.