An often exciting tale of medical malfeasance and wide-ranging criminality.
After a doctor is invited to review the tragic death of a patient, he discovers a wider conspiracy in Cooper’s series thriller.
Brad Parker, the cell-biologist director of the Maine Translational Research Institute, receives a call from Jerome Lazarus, the president of the prestigious Bateman Cancer Center, requesting help. Lazarus wants Parker to serve on a panel assessing the death of Victoria Altman, a woman who received an extraordinary overdose of medication. The two principal candidates for responsibility are Patricia Northrup, the physician who wrote the prescription, and Theodore Willingham, the doctor who administered it. Parker concludes that Northrup’s instructions were adequately clear and that Willingham—who, in Parker’s opinion, comes across as an “arrogant asshole”—bears the blame. However, the panel decides otherwise, which Parker finds bizarre. Later, he offers a disgraced Northrup a job at his institute and learns that she plans to sue the Bateman Cancer Center, but before she can, she’s shot and killed. Parker quickly suspects Willingham, but he turns up dead in a similar fashion, leading Parker, with the help of his romantic partner, FBI agent Karen Richmond, to conduct his own investigation. In this fifth installment of an ongoing series, Cooper deftly uncoils a complex scheme that not only involves murder, but also human trafficking. Despite its complications, the plot advances at a brisk pace, and the book is brimming with cinematic action and intrigue. However, the author flirts with melodrama at times, and the dialogue can come across as a bit stale, as when Parker threatens a villain who’s holding Karen against her will; the bad guy replies: “You’ll do what, lover boy?...I can promise that the two of you will be reunited before this is finished. Although you won’t exactly enjoy yourselves.” For the most part, though, the novel is a gripping and entertaining read.
An often exciting tale of medical malfeasance and wide-ranging criminality.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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