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A lovesick plastic surgeon learns the hard way that saying about skin-deep beauty, in a derivative debut thriller from erstwhile political (most notably, Reagan) speechwriter Gilder.

Young Doctor Jackson Maebry—talented, handsome, nice—on a fast track to a brilliant future, gets a fateful call one day that derails him. He’s summoned to the ER to help with a just-admitted patient, a young woman who’s been severely beaten, seriously worked over with a blunt instrument. It isn’t easy to recognize her, but Jackson can, since she’s Allie Sorosh, his lover. With considerable difficulty and consummate skill, he begins the process that he hopes will restore her beauty. But who could have done this to Allie? A random, particularly malevolent mugger? Or was it instead someone who knows her—a jealous ex-lover, perhaps? It just so happens there’s one of those at hand: Dr. Peter Brandt, head of Plastics at San Francisco Memorial, Jackson’s boss and mentor. Hard to conceive of the eminent and much admired Dr. Brandt in such violent terms, and yet the fact of a passionate, possessive previous relationship, now unrequited, is definitely worrisome. And the thing is that Allie has amnesia—that staple of hard-pressed plotters—and can’t remember who took the blunt instrument to her. Nor can Jackson be sure it wasn’t him. For years he’s been subject to emotionally driven blackouts and, yes, he does have this ungovernable temper. Detective Rossi, the investigating officer, soon latches on to Jackson as his favorite suspect, a conviction that lapses, however, when he himself meets with foul play—fatally. Well, what with one cataclysm or another befalling him, Jackson can be forgiven for thinking that his life is out of control. And in need of a makeover.

The voluminously detailed plastic surgery stuff aside—which sniffier readers will construe as a knife cutting both ways—nothing much new here.