NOTHING LASTS FOREVER

From mega-author Sheldon (The Stars Shine Down, 1992, etc.) comes a quasi-medical romance set in a large San Francisco county hospital. The novel begins with a murder trial: Paige Taylor, a young physician, is accused of killing a terminally ill patient who left her a million dollars in his will. The situation looks bad for Paige when witness after witness testifies that the patient hated her, and an eminent surgeon calls her incompetent. Then the action flashes back five years. Paige, Kat Hunter, and Honey Taft, the only women in the new crop of residents at Embarcadero County Hospital, meet at the hospital briefing session and decide to share an apartment as they embark upon their medical careers. Sheldon has done his homework and provides plenty of detail about the rigors of interns' lives: gruelling hours, sleep deprivation, petty professional backbiting, incompetent doctors, sexual harassment. But the characters are straight from central casting and about as deep as an April mud puddle in the noonday sun of July. Paige, the soi-disant heroine, is dumped by a childhood sweetheart; she has to heal enough to accept the suit of Jason Curtis, a young architect who falls madly in love with her at first sight. Kat, a beautiful, intelligent black woman, has sworn off men ever since she became pregnant with the child of her abusive stepfather, but she has her head turned by a handsome, slick new resident who tries to get her into bed on a $10,000 bet. Honey, the dull, plain sister in a family of brilliant overachievers, compensates for her shortcomings by studying the Kama Sutra and perfecting her sexual techniques. A thin thread connects these three, who are not especially interesting in and of themselves, nor when thrown together by heavy-handed plot manipulations. For diehard Sheldon fans, this will probably do the trick. But it won't win any new converts.