Medical thriller fans will appreciate the tantalizing plot and a markedly absorbing murder trial.
The sudden death of an intern at a Nashville hospital in 1996 leads to speculations of murder and vengeance in Tulipan’s debut medical thriller.
Dying in the operating room, Jason “JT” Thomas doesn’t leave behind many mourners. The philandering intern boasted about his frequent escapades with nurses at Arcadia Medical Center, and sex with emergency room nurse Leslie Arnot is the reason he missed multiple pages during a shift, ultimately resulting in the death of a young girl named Jenny. But his death is largely the result of his blood not clotting, caused, Dr. Sam Johnson suspects, by a blood thinner. This merely suggests murder, but it seems like a sound notion when Leslie turns up dead from a possible injection of potassium chloride. Sam helps Detective Henry Baskin with theories—perhaps someone at the hospital contaminated a latex glove—until he realizes that the motive, means and opportunity all point to scrub nurse Jane, the mother of Jenny. Unfortunately, Sam has fallen in love with Jane. The doctor scrambles to turn police attention away from her while hoping to find his way to the truth. Tulipan’s novel is a solid thriller with an unambiguous, concise structure that efficiently builds tension. It opens on the day of JT’s death and is then split into three parts—a flashback showing the events leading to Jenny’s death; the discovery of further evidence against Jane, including her fingerprints found at Leslie’s apartment; and a murder trial. The story is imposing not by piling on the suspects and pieces of evidence but by continually re-examining the same suspect and evidence and viewing them under different lights: The blood thinner, warfarin, is also found in rat poison and, as the defense attorney implies, could have made contact with JT’s skin by accident. Tulipan is generally reliable at explaining medical parlance or equipment in layperson’s terms, similar to how the district attorney asks pathologist Linda Levine to do so in court; however, the scene in which Sam and JT perform a shuntogram on Jenny will have many readers scratching their heads. The author nevertheless excels in developing other pangs of drama, as when Baskin, hoping to get JT’s body exhumed, learns that the body was donated to science; JT’s parents threaten to file a civil suit; and Sam becomes so willing to help Jane that some of his actions may not be legal.
Medical thriller fans will appreciate the tantalizing plot and a markedly absorbing murder trial.Pub Date: March 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4936-8115-0
Page Count: 222
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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