Bad medicine Catching New York's deadliest pill pusher

In what she calls "a memoir from the trenches," former prosecutor Bismuth shares her recollections of working on the four-year investigation and 18-week trial of a pill-pushing medical doctor. A decade ago, she started looking into Stan Li, a New Jersey anesthesiologist who moonlighted as a pain-clinic doctor in Queens on weekends. His drug-abusing patients paid him mainly in cash for fentanyl, oxycodone, Vicodin, and Xanax prescriptions. Two of these men overdosed and died within days of getting painkiller prescriptions from him. As a result, after a four-month trial in 2014, a jury convicted Li of two counts of second-degree manslaughter. The story frequently jumps back and forth in time rather than proceeding chronologically, which can make it difficult to follow. These shifts are labeled, as in "April 10, 2014: Day 22 of Trial," and then, a few pages later, "September 11, 2013: 190 Days Until Trial." Meanwhile, a side drama concerns Bismuth's deteriorating marriage, divorce, life as a single mother, and new boyfriend. The takeaways? Prosecutors are human, and bad doctors can destroy lives.

In this dramatic true crime debut, attorney Bismuth recounts her role as a member of New York City's Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor in helping to convict doctor Stan Li of manslaughter in 2014. With the help of a homicide detective, Bismuth spent four years building the case with testimony from former patients describing how they got opioid prescriptions for cash at Li's pain clinic in Queens. Meanwhile, Bismuth's personal life was in shambles as she headed for divorce and single parenthood. Interspersing her blow-by-low rundown of the investigation and trial with vivid flashbacks and flash-forwards, and evidence that opioid prescriptions doubled in New York between 2007 and 2010, Bismuth illustrates the unique difficulties in holding unscrupulous doctors to account for fostering the nationwide opioid epidemic. In one of the book's most memorable trial scenes, the father of a heroin addict recounts his fruitless efforts to persuade Li to stop overprescribing fentanyl, morphine, Vicodin, and Xanax to his daughter. Bismuth builds tension expertly, and offers hope that the tools of law enforcement can be used to reign in the worst abuses of the medical industry. This gritty page-turner offers a unique perspective on America's opioid crisis. (Jan.)

Bismuth, a former prosecutor, recounts the trial of Stan Li, a Queens, NY, physician who in 2014 was convicted of manslaughter in the overdose deaths of two of his patients. Bismuth was fairly new to the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor when she received a tip that Li was writing prescriptions for Xanax and oxycodone in exchange for cash, as well as committing insurance fraud. Carefully detailed accounts of the investigation and trial, including testimony from family members of the victims, are interwoven with recollections from the author's life; as a result, the time line can be confusing, jumping back and forth several times in a chapter. Nevertheless, the author skillfully demonstrates how difficult--but crucial--it was to hold a doctor of Li's qualifications accountable for reckless prescribing. VERDICT Bismuth has made an important contribution to the growing landscape of books documenting the opioid epidemic (Beth Macy's Dopesick; Ryan Hampton's American Fix; Ben Westhoff's Fentanyl, Inc.). Readers horrified by the effects of the opioid crisis will appreciate.--Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

As America's opioid epidemic gathered pace in the early 2010s, a rookie New York prosecutor went after a physician who sometimes wrote 100 prescriptions a day. Here she tells the story. "There is no greater misfortune than greed," observed the judge, quoting Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. Bismuth's lively account of the four-year investigation and trial of Dr. Stan Li--a rogue anesthesiologist who ran a basement pain-management clinic on the weekends--shows the grim human cost of that greed. The author reveals opioid giant Purdue Pharma's "relentless, misleading, and highly effective" marketing campaign and provides chilling details of the raging epidemic their efforts helped fuel. Between 2007 and 2010, opiate prescriptions jumped 100%. "By 2016," writes Bismuth, "more than sixty-three thousand human lives would be lost from drug overdoses alone, and...more than forty thousand of those deaths would involve at least one opioid." As we join the investigation of Li, ultimately tried on 211 counts, including two of homicide, we meet a cast of memorable individuals, from witnesses to addicts to bereaved relatives. These include Margaret Rappold, whose son overdosed at age 21; addict Dawn Tamasi, whose parents begged Dr. Li to stop prescribing after he had given her eight separate drugs; David Laffer, another Li patient, who shot four people as he stole 11,000 pills from a pharmacy; Eddie Valora, the tipster who first alerted the police; and Jean Stone, a Medicare fraud expert who also writes a fashion blog. The narrative jumps backward and forward too often between the investigation and the trial, which can be confusing in certain sections, and the tossed-off title of the book does no service to this vivid first-person narrative. But the author, an attorney, is skilled in her depictions of the courtroom scenes--notably the complex jousting of the expert witnesses. A gripping read tailor-made for the silver screen. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.