A depressingly thorough tour of managed-care malfeasance that’s a whistleblower’s pipe dream—though the skullduggery is so...
Skeletons leap from a San Francisco HMO’s closet after its CEO is struck by a hit-and-run driver and dies in his company’s own hospital: Lescroart’s latest look at the sociology of murder.
Before you start cheering the ironic aptness of Tim Markham’s death, consider some of the complications. The unidentified jogger was so badly injured at the accident scene that the ambulance driver considered taking him to County Hospital lest Parnassus Health’s cost-conscious Portola Hospital stabilize him and then ship him over to County anyway. Shortly after Markham checks out, his wife Carla, their three teenagers, and the family dog are shot to death in a transparently phony murder-suicide. Since Markham had been sleeping with Ann Kensing, her husband Eric, a Parnassus staff physician, leaps to the top of Lt. Abe Glitsky’s suspect list. And when Glitsky’s best friend Dismas Hardy, the lawyer Eric’s retained to dispel the gathering clouds of suspicion, hears that Markham was murdered as well by a lethal injection of potassium, he starts seriously digging into Parnassus’ finances. The results would gratify the most fervid HMO–basher. Parnassus, who insures the city’s municipal employees, had just stuck the mayor’s office with a whopping $13 million bill for additional services rendered over the past two years—a bill the city is sharply disputing, though it can’t afford to sue Parnassus out of business. Now there are whispers of kickbacks for listing less-than-effective generic substitute drugs in the corporation’s formulary, pending malpractice actions over a string of deaths in Portola’s Intensive Care Unit, and the distinct possibility that a dozen of those deaths, maybe more, involved care-giving more baleful than careless.
A depressingly thorough tour of managed-care malfeasance that’s a whistleblower’s pipe dream—though the skullduggery is so complete, so densely imagined, and so lacking in drama that Hardy and Glitsky (The Hearing, p. 132, etc.) come up short on both mystery and suspense.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-94576-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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