“In the financial world, whether it involved manufacturing lightbulbs or delivering healthcare, fairness was at best an afterthought”
CRITICAL is enjoy“In the financial world, whether it involved manufacturing lightbulbs or delivering healthcare, fairness was at best an afterthought”
CRITICAL is enjoyable, to be sure, and one might even say it verged on gripping. But it certainly wasn’t groundbreaking or innovative by any stretch of the imagination. Light years, if I may say, from his single-handed creation of the medical thriller genre in COMA so many years ago.
CRITICAL is a riff on a pair of overworked, old chestnut, medical thriller tropes – the medical corporation as the greedy, money-grubbing nasty in the USA in which health care is any-thing but universal; and, the epidemiological battle to isolate post-operative nosocomial infections that ruthlessly attack and kill their hosts in mere hours, a losing war that is almost over before the doctors determine that they are even in such a lethal battle.
That said, Cook’s description of specialty hospitals as an especially egregious example of capitalist greed in American healthcare is quite riveting:
“… the success of the specialty hospital depended exclusively on the doctor-owners admitting their paying patients, meaning those patients with insurance, either private or Medicare, or those patients with adequate wealth. The specialty-hospital business … was not interested … in charity cases, or for that matter, any cases where cost might exceed revenue.”
Dialogue was credible and flowed naturally. I was rather taken with one instance of a female doctor’s caustic (and, if I may say so, perhaps typically female) response to a male colleague who had the temerity to call her bullheaded. “You are bullheaded. I’m merely persistent, and, of course, I have the added benefit of being right.”
LOL, definitely sounds like someone was listening to my last conversation with my wife. But, I digress …
An enjoyable addition to the ever expanding library of available medical thrillers and an easy novel to recommend.
A bacterial pandemic threat in a post Covid-19 world
If you’re nervous about the realities of Covid-19 and how the pandemic is playing out around you,A bacterial pandemic threat in a post Covid-19 world
If you’re nervous about the realities of Covid-19 and how the pandemic is playing out around you, Canadian author Daniel Kalla’s LOST IMMUNITY certainly won’t set your mind at ease. Set in a hypothetical post Covid-19 world, LOST IMMUNITY posits an outbreak of Meningitis-C in Seattle in which the Patient Zero Vector imports the deadly bacteria from Iceland and starts the hypothetical plague ball rolling in a bible camp in Seattle. The most susceptible victims are children and teenagers so, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the issue of vaccinations, testing, government approval, release and roll-out, logistics, parental releases and so on, are a BIG problem. Given that the disease incubates and manifests at astonishing speeds with brutal, devastating symptoms and a 50% mortality rate, it’s clear that Seattle’s Public Health authorities and the CDC are between a truckload of rocks and the proverbial hard place.
Like Kalla’s last runaway success THE LAST HIGH, LOST IMMUNITY is a compelling high-speed medical thriller that will simply blow away lovers of the genre. And Kalla’s medical background and experience comes to the fore as he provides the reader with a wealth of epidemiological detail; triage; graphic descriptions of the disease’s progress, symptoms and results; real-life logistical issues of a vaccination campaign; and the related politics, both left and right!
As a reader, if your politics lie on the left of the spectrum, you are unlikely to see any information that will convince you to even have sympathy with the “anti-vaxxers”, more politely characterized as the “vaccine hesitant”. And, if you’ve got any doubts about the altruism or public interest embodied in the motives of pharmaceutical research, well … just read LOST IMMUNITY and see what you think!
That’s it! I’m outta here! I’m through. I’m breaking up with Kathy Reichs and Temperance Brennan. No more pain for me!
DEVIL BONIt’s not me! It’s her!
That’s it! I’m outta here! I’m through. I’m breaking up with Kathy Reichs and Temperance Brennan. No more pain for me!
DEVIL BONES started out well, in fact, REALLY well and I was definitely excited. A clever soft-pedalled introduction around Brennan in the context of her alter ego as a forensic anthropology instructor in the local university gave Reichs a chance to offer some interesting information on the various specialties in anthropology. The discovery of some human remains in a basement under renovation set up a story with tremendous promise. Lots of seriously interesting side-bar essays on syncretic religions – two or more cultural and spiritual ideologies combined into a single religion, such as Santería or Voodoo. Then Reichs introduced her right-wing nasty, the guy who you just knew was ultimately going to wind up on the suspect list:
“Preacher turned county commissioner, [he] was a case study of extremist ideology, pseudo-Christianity, pseudo-patriotism, and thinly veiled white-male supremacy. His was a constituency that wanted the economy unregulated, the welfare state small, the military strong, and the citizenry white, native born, and strictly New Testament.”
Given my less than ambivalent feelings about right-wing fundamental Christian evangelicalism and the state of current US politics, I was well and truly hooked. But THEN came the introduction of an untold number of bit players (most of whom ended up as dead-end and irrelevant); possible investigations pointed in about a thousand different directions; and the continuing woes of Brennan’s truly messed-up life as a less than totally reformed alcoholic, a very confused mother, and a psychologically encumbered divorcée who isn’t really sure who she wants to bed down with. Top it all off by adding another man and some seriously unprofessional sexual exploits with an attorney who just happens to be defending someone under investigation.
Temperance Brennan’s life is a train wreck that’s still happening. The locomotive has stopped but the cars are still de-railing and piling up behind it! I’m going to jump off before the car I’m riding in joins the wreckage.
In her capacity as a university instructor, Temperance Brennan is supervising an archaeological field school grouHey! Who left this fresh corpse here?
In her capacity as a university instructor, Temperance Brennan is supervising an archaeological field school group in the ruins of a Native American burial ground on a small island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. But when they discover an articulated skeleton with fresh bones, remaining soft tissue and hair, clearly in a place where it simply doesn’t belong, her old friend Emma Rousseau, the local coroner, persuades her to stay on and help with the investigation. More bodies lead Brennan, her ex-husband Pete Marino, and her on-again, off-again current lover Andrew Ryan onto the trail of what appears to be a serial killer ring trafficking in human organs.
As usual, the forensic science and the medical interludes are informative, educational, and even entertaining while avoiding the trap of being intrusive or pedantic. On the other hand, the thriller part of the thriller never really came close to thrilling. It didn’t fall so low as pedestrian and there are few readers who would say that they weren’t entertained for a few hours. But BREAK NO BONES was definitely less than gripping or memorable. And, also as usual, Temperance Brennan (like her contemporary forensic heroine, Kay Scarpetta) stumbles through her personal relationships with what what is clearly a total lack of any idea as to what she wants or where she is headed. As a man, my heart goes out to Andrew Ryan and Pete Marino.
“ … beneath Vancouver’s beautiful veneer lies a lot of ugliness.”
It was true when Canadian author William Deverell penned his iconic best-selling “ … beneath Vancouver’s beautiful veneer lies a lot of ugliness.”
It was true when Canadian author William Deverell penned his iconic best-selling legal thriller NEEDLES and it’s true now. Vancouver is a city with an evil, insidious drug problem. In 1988, it was heroin and, while heroin is still an issue, the heart of today’s problem is fentanyl and opioids. THE LAST HIGH imagines a terrifying scenario in which a batch of raw carfentanil, (fentanyl on steroids, if you will, to coin a phrase that is at once ludicrous but painfully à propos), is released on the street. The drug is so powerful as to result almost universally in virtually instant death from the ingestion or injection of even the most minute dosage. In effect, the first high is THE LAST HIGH and any dose is a fatal overdose.
Kalla’s experience as an emergency room physician motivates his heart-thumping high speed rendition of the medical realities of a drug overdose. How’s this for a bit of medical thriller wonderfulness?
“… the heart rate reads a hundred and thirty while the systolic blood pressure sits critically low at sixty and the oxygen saturation is only eighty-one percent. It’s information enough for Julie to diagnose Chloe with cardiogenic shock and florid heart failure. Her lungs must have filled with fluid and she’s drowning in her own secretions, which have backed up because of a heart that’s too damaged to pump blood properly. The syndrome is one of emergency medicine’s most feared Catch-22s – a patient who desperately needs to have her breathing supported, ideally with a ventilator, but can’t afford any intervention that will drop her blood pressure by even a single point, … ”
Or how about this paramedic’s succinct summary of the location and extent of a gunshot wound and the degree of subsequent blood loss? My medical knowledge isn’t sufficient to judge this excerpt’s credibility, but it sure sounds right to me!
“Single GSW to the proximal biceps with an arterial bleed. Controlled by proximal tourniquet. No other identified injuries. GCS fifteen. Peripheral pulse weak but present. Grade two hemorrhagic shock.”
And THE LAST HIGH's success isn’t predicated on high-speed action alone. Character development is phenomenal. Dialogue is crisp and believable. There’s even a self-referencing, light-hearted cameo à la Clive Cussler or Alfred Hitchcock:
“We have two docs who do ICU part-time. And two others who also work palliative care on the side. One guy even writes books – medical thrillers – they’re not half bad.”
And, of course, what Canadian reader wouldn’t chuckle at this timely sardonic reference to the dysfunctional shambles that we are currently witnessing south of the border:
“What a disaster! Who talks like this at a dinner party? … Can we please talk about Trump instead?”
Daniel Kalla is a recent find for me and THE LAST HIGH is only the fourth of his novels that I’ve read, no, let’s say devoured. But I sure intend to hunt down the titles on his back list as quickly as I can. Definitely recommended for those who love a great medical thriller.
"Maybe something goes wrong in the interactions between the small atoms in our bodies … "
“… and the large atoms around us”!
On the other hand, any rea"Maybe something goes wrong in the interactions between the small atoms in our bodies … "
“… and the large atoms around us”!
On the other hand, any reader aware of basic scientific facts today will realize that this idea is ridiculous! The nature of the strong and electromagnetic forces is only one of the reasons why the science involved with shrinking people two to three orders of magnitude is pure fantasy and to present it as serious science fiction is not only inexcusable, it’s insulting to scientifically informed readers. One simply does not shrink atoms or, under normal temperature and pressure conditions, compress them to distances closer to one another. Another obvious problem – the increasing ratio of surface area to volume as an organism shrinks presents the metabolic problem of ever increasing heat loss. A warm-blooded mammal that was only ½” tall would have to spend all day consuming its own weight in nutrients simply in order to stay alive and keep its own internal furnaces burning. Well, I think you get the idea. The basic premise of the entire novel is ill-conceived. It might have worked for a silly, self-mocking children’s comedy like “HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS!” but a full length serious adult thriller? I don’t think so!
And then to add in the villain trope of the stereotypical, cartoonish, mustache-twirling, über-wealthy, evil, maniacal corporate monster who wishes to weaponize his company’s technology and sell it to the highest bidder (who no doubt will use it in a quest for world domination)? Well, it all becomes just a little over the top and ridiculous.
But, believe it or not … all of that said, if one reads past the impossible science, the real science that MICRO offers is positively fascinating and genuinely interesting – talking being at inaudibly high frequencies because of the shorter wave length that the shrunken folks would produce; amazing sidebar essays on the behaviour of wasps, beetles, spiders and other even tinier critters; the difficulties of drinking when one doesn’t have the strength to break through the surface tension holding a drop of water together; venoms; pheromones; and much, much more. It actually turns what I would have characterized as a one-star laffer (or possibly even a DNF wall-banger) into a readable and moderately enjoyable 3-star read that would have been better presented as a non-fiction popular science book written from the novel perspective of a fictional shrunken scientist!
Loading...
