THE PHYSICIANS

Headhunter Denker's new novel (see also The Director; The Kingmaker) takes place in and out of a large city hospital and a courtroom — the venue of his last book (A Place for the Mighty) — where pediatrician Chris Grant is charged with malpractice after handling the jaundiced neonate, newborn to you, with a dangerously high bilirubin count. He's the one and only grandson of the richest man around but when the infant later shows signs of permanent retardation, he levels the charge that phototherapy was used without consent. Grant, however, and his Portia, Laura, refuse to settle for anything less than the whole truth which had been withheld from the girl's obstetrician (a previous pregnancy — by a black lover — which made her Rh factor a foregone liability). All of it's as stubbornly resistant as a secondary infection but like they say in medicine, treat the treatable — and that's the audience which finds the doctor's purlieu as readable as it is watchable.