Review by New York Times Review
MEDICAL MYSTERIES CAN be so messy, what with all those untidy body parts and slippery viscera. THE HOLLOW MEN (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), a first novel by the pseudonymous Rob McCarthy, delivers its gruesome details in the authentic voice of the medical student McCarthy happens to be. The stage is set at John Ruskin University Hospital in London, where Harry Kent, on duty at the Accident & Emergency department and on police call as a medical examiner, saves the life of Solomon Idris, a desperate teenager shot by trigger-happy cops during a bungled hostage standoff at a fast-food restaurant. Harry has his quirks. ("Every hospital had its speed addicts ... but Harry was careful.") And he's not proud of having betrayed his best friend. ("Long story short, I slept with his wife.") But he's heroic in a crisis and obsessively devoted to some of his sadder cases, like Zara, his name for an unidentified girl who's been comatose since 2011. When she arrived at the hospital, her hair had been shocking pink and as it grew out Harry made sure it was dyed the same color. Because he regards his nerve-racking job with a certain sense of awe and his professional efforts with a degree of modesty, Harry is much more complicated than the conventional fearless hero. Maybe that's because he secretly feels like one of T. S. Eliot's hollow men, forever searching for something to fill his empty soul. That would also explain why he feels responsible for people like Zara and Idris, who have no one else "to speak for them." Whatever his sins, Harry doesn't deserve to be made a scapegoat when someone tries to murder Idris - for what reason, no one knows - as he lies helpless in the hospital in a coma. And although the plot, centered on violent youth gangs in depressed areas, is fairly predictable, it's presented with jarring realism and zero sentimentality. McCarthy's piercing view of the fortified world of a big metropolitan hospital reflects the perspective of an insider who may sometimes wish he weren't so close to the action. COULD YOU LIVE without kittens? How about books? Could you live without books? In THE GIRL BEFORE (Ballantine, $27), J P Delaney offers a diabolical choice - a chance to live in the house of your dreams if you renounce almost all material attachments. Both Jane Cavendish and the property's previous tenant, Emma Matthews, have made considerable sacrifices to live at 1 Folgate Street, an extraordinary ultraminimalist mansion ("a compact cube of pale stone") that comes with some 200 restrictive rules of occupancy, set by the architect. The bans on children, pets and loud parties are only the beginning; tenants are forbidden to introduce so much as a throw pillow into this austere environment, which is electronically programmed to monitor itself. Unsurprisingly, that hyperattentiveness also distinguishes the architect, Edward Monkford, who romances both women, giving them identical jewels and introducing them to cosmopolitan delights like eating live seafood. There's a distinct creepiness to this claustrophobic story, but in time common sense triumphs; what initially felt deliciously sinister eventually seems schematic and just plain sadistic. IT'S THE "SEASON OF GRAY" in Randall Silvis's chilly suspense novel TWO DAYS GONE (Sourcebooks Landmark, paper, $15.99), a wintry time when "surliness prevails" in the northwestern wedge of Pennsylvania. There a wanted man hides in the woods, "numb with cold and hunger and disbelief." The fugitive is Tom Huston, a locally well-liked novelist who fled his house two days earlier, leaving his wife and three children slaughtered in their beds. Now Sgt. Ryan DeMarco has been charged with directing the hunt for a man he has come to know as a friend. Silvis tells his parallel stories - of Huston's mad wanderings in the forest and DeMarco's reluctant dragnet - with finely tuned sensitivity. The novelist uses brute willpower to close his mind to painful reality, while the policeman struggles to understand his quarry by reading Huston's notes for an unfinished novel. "How much of the voice was artifice and how much a reflection of the man?" DeMarco wonders. He asks the same question of himself, then supplies his own answer. "We are all made up," he says. "We are only real at night." JOANNE HARRIS DELIVERS mischief and murder to an English prep school in DIFFERENT CLASS (Touchstone, $26), a delightfully malicious view of privileged students with overly active imaginations. The novel's alarming events are mostly related by Roy Straitley, a crotchety Latin master with a droll sense of humor and a partiality for students who are "rebels and clowns." In deference to the new reformist headmaster at St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, Straitley will deign to invite visiting parents into his office, "much as folklore dictates we should invite a vampire before he can feed." He draws the line, though, at trivializing the classics department or (God forbid!) consolidating with Mulberry House, a school for girls. But, as we learn from the diary of someone with a disturbing taste for torturing animals, more dangerous forces lie elsewhere. Years earlier, Harry Clarke, a charismatic English teacher, had been unfairly accused of pederasty and charged with murder. But, thanks to Straitley, we now know where to look for the true spawn of Satan.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Harry Kent is a London doctor who moonlights as a police surgeon. After a long night at the hospital, he is called into a hostage situation at a fast-food restaurant in south London. Solomon, the young hostage taker, is ill, and Kent gets him into the hospital, which turns out to be a major problem there are people who want Solomon dead, and some of those people could be some of Kent's colleagues. DI Frankie Noble is on the case, and she is a cop who doesn't mind breaking a few rules when she needs to. Frankie and Harry become an item, but that just adds to the fun of this lightning-fast British medical thriller that also feels like a police procedural at times. There is a bit of medical jargon sprinkled throughout the book, but fans of ER, Chicago Med, or Grey's Anatomy will feel right at home here, and readers who enjoy fast-paced thrillers, like those from Val McDermid and Mark Billingham, should enjoy this as well.--Alesi, Stacy Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Medical student McCarthy's accomplished first novel and series launch plunges Harry Kent, a London ER doctor who also serves as an on-call doctor for police matters (the British term is police surgeon), into a difficult situation: 17-year-old Solomon Idris has taken hostages in a fast-food restaurant and he needs medical help. Idris will let three hostages go if a physician treats him. Kent enters the restaurant, where he starts to treat Idris, but when the snipers covering Kent hear a gunshot, they shoot, wounding Idris. The teenager is taken to a hospital, where someone tries to kill him. The angry, determined Kent makes it his mission to save Idris-and to find out what made him resort to such a violent act. Kent's considerable backstory as an army doctor in Afghanistan includes his connection to James Lahiri, a doctor who saved Kent's life overseas and has been treating Idris in London. McCarthy provides a fascinating look at the sociology of crime and policing while deftly exploring the motivations of Idris, Kent, and Lahiri. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company (U.K.). (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
[DEBUT] This debut mystery introduces Dr. Harry Kent, a veteran of Afghanistan who was critically injured while serving in a forward medical unit and saved by his best friend. Now working with the London Metropolitan Police as a police surgeon, he is called in to treat 17-year-old Solomon Idris, who has taken hostages in a local fast-food restaurant and who is one of his old friend's patients. Solomon demands to talk to a lawyer, but as Kent is treating him, the police storm the restaurant and shoot the teenager. The boy is rushed to the hospital, and the next day his life is again endangered when his treatment is mixed up. It becomes clear that someone does not want Solomon to talk, and Kent begins to suspect that the "someone" is in the medical field. Verdict This fast-paced mix of medical thriller and crime novel keeps readers guessing until the surprising finale. McCarthy's medical knowledge as a fourth-year medical student and the South London setting give this book an authenticity that draws mystery fans in and will have them looking forward to the next Dr. Harry Kent novel.-Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A London police surgeon becomes entangled in the case of a teenager who takes a restaurant full of people hostage.Dr. Harry Kent divides his time between working with the London Metropolitan Police as a Force Medical Examinereveryone calls them police surgeons though he never wields a scalpeland as an anesthetist at John Ruskin University Hospital. Hes called out to an active scene, already an unusual situation, where a visibly ill 17-year-old named Solomon Idris has taken a group of people hostage at a fried chicken joint. His demands are strange: he wants to speak to a lawyer and have his statement broadcast on the BBC. When Harry manages to speak to him, Solomon rambles on about a girl named Keisha and how they killed her and never paid the consequences. Solomons plan predictably doesnt go wellhostage situations rarely do when there are armed police outsidebut Harry suspects there are larger forces at play. Even when Solomon arrives at the hospital, bloody but alive, one medical catastrophe after another makes Harry, and even the skeptical DI Frances Noble, suspect that Solomon may be part of a larger scheme. They discover the boy is HIV-positive, and his rantings about Keisha, who it turns out committed suicide months earlier, may not be as crazy as they first sounded. Harry, who carries the expected physical and emotional scars from his time as a medic in Afghanistan, is determined to help not only Solomon, but also those others whose voices are routinely silenced by the more powerful. While Harry is at times an empathetic healer, McCarthy stuffs his debut with too much medical minutia, overwhelming whatever suspense there may have been. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
