OATH OF DISHONOR

Miss Rogers, a former lawyer, indicts the medical profession's conspiracy of silence regarding its errors, cover ups, and out-of-court settlements for malpractice. Her theme convinces. This courtroom novel begins misleadingly as intelligent claptrap, with dialogue like branded coffee, a plot seemingly snapped out on a plastic typewriter, sex enough to fill a Simmons mattress--until suddenly the author swings a meathook into your chin and drags you off to court. Whereof she knows her business, especially California style. Ironically, in this instance the doctor is guiltless, though his colleagues lie to save him from himself and protect their own kind. Guilty is the doctor's old flame, a Washington hostess, suing for a cool million. Her dishonor is that she blames her dead husband, a Senator, for a drunk driving accident in which she was the driver and which caused her daughter's blindness in one eye. She flies her daughter to California for surgery by her former sweetheart, an eye doctor. The night before the operation she seduces him. Thus, when he tells her the operation failed and the eye must be removed, she transfers her guilt to him and sues him. He loses the case but wins a moral victory over everyone... The novel is obviously headed for movie-dom, bed-sellerdom, and profits maximum.