Beat the Reaper

by: Josh Bazell

Published by: Little Brown & Company

Reviewed by Kathy Perschmann

Josh Bazell has a degree in English and writing from Brown and an MD from Columbia–and he wrote this book while working as an intern! Amazing.

Beat the Reaper is totally unique, a medical thriller/mafia novel rolled together. Bazell’s medical footnotes are as absorbing as the plot is riveting.

Dr. Peter Brown is a resident at a disintegrating Manhattan hospital. And, we soon learn that he has skills most doctors do not have, when he takes out an armed mugger on his way to work, then delivers him to the emergency room.

Pietro Brnwa (Brown’s real name) is living with his grandparents and comes home from school one day to find them shot to death–and after no leads from the police, he vows vengeance. He decides that it must have been a mafia hit, but he cannot figure out why. He needs to find out who killed them, and then get revenge.

Now he has been “adopted” by an uncle, has enough money and is living in his grandparent’s house, and transfers to a private school that has a lot of mafia kids as students. He makes friends with the Locanos, almost becoming part of their family. David Lucano, the father, is a mafia lawyer. He finally helps Peter find the killers; and Peter’s career as a hit man is started. Things get complicated when his friend Adam Lucano wants to get “made” by helping make a hit. It all goes terribly wrong and Peter is arrested and tried for a murder he did not commit.

The story is told in flashbacks as Dr. Brown goes through his exhausting day in the hospital. Dr. Brown is now in the witness protection program; unfortunately one of his patients is an old acquaintance, dying of stomach cancer, but he recognizes Peter and gives him up in a phone call to an associate–sort of a “if I die, then tell so and so…” routine. Well the guy IS going to die, but when? Peter becomes committed to at least making sure he survives his surgery with an expensive celebrity hack doctor.

The flashbacks to Brown’s early days as a hit man, the tragic events that led him into the witness protection program, and Bazell’s medical knowledge, all combine to make this a deeply fascinating, if violent and a bit gritty, tale. The unique climax is literally bone-shattering.

Armchair Interviews says: Very good book, just be forewarned about the extreme violence.

Author’s Web site: http://www.BeatTheReaper.com