Beat the Reaper: A Novel
by Josh Bazell
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.19 You Save: $21.80 (87%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Beat the Reaper: A Novel
Book Review: Beat the Reaper
Summary: 5 Stars
Dr. Peter Brown, ne Pietro Brnwa [pronounced "Browna"], has become a doctor thanks to the Witness Protection Program in which he was placed seven years before the story opens. [His nickname, "Bearclaw," has its own backstory, at which one could never even begin to guess.] The "Reaper" of the title is, of course, death, the moment of which is referred to as ReaperTime. Pietro bears rather unusual tattoos, at least in combination: a snake staff on one shoulder, a Star of David on the other.
The pivotal moment of Pietro's teenage years was when he found his grandparents, who had raised him, brutally murdered in their New Jersey home in an apparent robbery. The author goes into Pietro's grandparents' own teenage years as the tale has been told to him, as survivors of the Holocaust and the "last truly decent people on earth." He becomes best friends with a young man, nicknamed "Skinflick" [no attempt will here be made to explain that one either], whose father is a prominent man in the mafia, and in his junior year in high school Peter becomes a hit man at his behest. The novel juxtaposes scenes from this period in his life with current scenes, after Pietro becomes "Peter," completes a premed program at Bryn Mawr, receives his MD, and is now a pill-popping intern in Internal Medicine in a NY hospital. [In point of fact, the author is himself a CA medical resident.] When Peter is recognized by a new patient, who fears for his life not by virtue of his quite serious physical condition but from what he fears will be Peter's reaction to being recognized as a mafia killer, and threatens to expose his present whereabouts to the mob, Peter must try to keep him alive despite his survival instincts, much less his proclivities.
"Beat the Reaper" is an action-packed novel, with sporadic scenes of casual and startling violence. And beneath the banter there's a lot of serious stuff going on, some of which stayed with this reader, including things as diverse as aspects of the Holocaust and hospital procedures one never hears about, and which I fervently hoped derived from the author's obviously fertile imagination. It is a fast, very funny, and nerve-tingling read, and is highly recommended. [The author's website is www.beatthereaper.com.]
Book Review: Wikipedia With a Plot
Summary: 5 Stars
OK, Josh Bazell. I'm impressed. Blown away, actually. It's not often that I come across one of those rare novels that hooks me in the first few pages and then just won't let go, binding me to the pages and turning all plans for the day into minor obstacles getting in between me and finishing your damn book. So thanks, Josh, for trashing my day - but in such an entertaining fashion.
Dr. Peter Brown is a young intern in one of Manhattan's seedier neighborhood hospitals. But he is also Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwa, a self-described "Easter Island sculpture of a longshoreman," a former hit man for the mob currently in the Federal Witness Protection Program. When Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddie Squillante, shows up in Peter's ward dying of stomach cancer, Brown knows he's been outed and that his days of playing Young Dr. Killdare are terminally numbered. So what could have been a predictable and oft-told tale of out running the mob becomes, in credit to Bazell's brilliance, a riveting romp of nearly nonstop violence and corrosive humor spanning a couple of decades and as many continents, a yarn that on the surface may feel like just another entry in the crowded shelves of pulp fiction - until the reader defibrillated into an unexpected depths of passion, insight, and scapel-edged, uninhibited cynicism that leaves no cows sacred and few conventional wisdoms unchallenged.
Josh Bazell is Charlie Huston with quotation marks. Duane Swierczynski with footnotes. Lee Child with soul. A writer with attitude and irreverence and "puddles of blood and teeth" who takes an outrageous and seemingly absurd assortment topics that run the gamut from anatomy to shark attacks to Auschwitz - and makes it all work. Bazell carves deftly between Pietro Brnwa the mobster to Peter Brown the doctor, each plot line separated by time and competing with the other in pulse, adrenaline and, surprisingly, intellect, while rushing to the most disgustingly bizarre - but satisfying - climax I can remember. That rare novel in which the ending actually does credit to, and exceeds the expectations of, the pages that lead to it.
So thanks a lot, Josh, but hey - I'll look forward to wasting another day with your next stroke of genius.
Book Review: Sit back and enjoy a true masterpiece thriller, expertly written by one of today's most promising authors
Summary: 5 Stars
This is truly a masterfully crafted book, in which almost every detail -- even the smallest and seemingly most insignificant ones -- come back to hit you in the face in a big way. Two stories, past and present, are expertly interwoven, and the author reveals information at precisely the right time to advance the plot. By the mid-point of the book, I started to realize I was reading a masterpiece. And unlike so many other popular novels I've recently read, the book doesn't end 3/4 of the way through to be padded by epilogue fluff: the stunning conclusion to this story is a true climax; as unexpected as it is gruesome and hard-to-read.
Three of the four one-star reviews here at Amazon criticize the book's language. I, too, thought the opening chapter was overly laced with F-bombs in a way that seemed to hint at the author's lack of skill. Boy, was I wrong, though. If you're turned off by profanity in general, then maybe you won't like this book. But if it's only gratuitous profanity unskillfully used that presents a problem for you, slug through the first chapter and you will be amazed.
You probably know if you've read this far that the book is about a mafia hit man who enters witness protection as a medical student. I describe it as The Sopranos meets Scrubs. Detailed anatomy lessons, which at first seem extraneous, end up figuring centrally to the plot. There are also a slew of other interesting details, relayed from the first-person perspective of the author. For example, did you know that the corporation that ran the Auschwitz forced-labor camp was split up in 1951, but continues today as BASF and Bayer?
As I read this book, my opinion went from "eh, not so good"; to "pretty good"; to "amazing"; to "masterpiece!" I recently read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The White Tiger: A Novel (Man Booker Prize), and I'd say Beat the Reaper easily outdoes them both. Wow!
Book Review: Lie down with dogs and you're gonna get fleas.
Summary: 4 Stars
This is undoubtedly one of the most bizarre books I have ever read, a virtual bloodbath of murder and mayhem (complete with footnotes), as intern Doctor Peter Brown, comes face to face with the consequences of his criminal past. On his rounds one harried shift, Brown is shocked to see an equally flustered familiar face, the pre-op LoBrutto, known as Squillante, putting Brown's new life at risk with one phone call. It is in Brown's interest to make sure that Squillante keeps breathing after his surgery (yet another tragi-comic scene), but circumstances escalate beyond Brown's control, the ugly realities of a violent connection to the mob resurfacing in a final, gore-filled denouement.
Apparently Brown is on the road to redemption at Manhattan Catholic hospital, making restitution for the many deaths he delivered for "refined" mobster David Locano. Raised by loving grandparents who are killed in a home invasion robbery when the boy is fifteen, Pietro Brnwa sets out to deliver justice to the killers, but becomes enmeshed in Locane's family, nuclear and in the larger sense, seduced by their welcome and absolute acceptance. How a vulnerable young man becomes a mafia killing machine is explained by a panicking intern who sees the end of his dreams in that encounter with Squillante. A gruesome story unfolds, Pietro inured to the mindless carnage he leaves in his wake, unperturbed until the predator becomes the prey.
Bazell accomplishes this brilliant farce through the force of his acerbic dialog, an outrageous mix of murder, romance and black humor, a deeply-flawed justice system, a roiling shark's tank in New Jersey and the brutal pragmatism of hospital life, where Death stalks the surgical ward with careless disregard. Although Beat the Reaper is like watching a particularly gruesome slasher flick, this author grabs hold of his tale with relentless authority, unflinching in the face of daunting odds, as carnage past and present piles up around his feet. Not for the squeamish, Bazell never slackens the pace until its shocking conclusion. Luan Gaines/2008.
Book Review: Fast paced thriller with a medical mystery twist
Summary: 4 Stars
Peter Brown is a doctor at Manhattan Catholic Hospital with a horrible secret in his past. He is part of the Federal Witness Protection Program. Raised by his grandparents, Pietro Brwna, as he was known as at that time, comes home to find them brutally murdered. Having nowhere else to go, he attends an exclusive prep school and becomes friends with Adam Locano, the son of a Mafia lawyer. The Locanos treat him like family and eventually, Peter becomes a member of the Mafia.
Things go fine for a while but then Peter meets Magdalena and wants out of the mob. It looks like he'll be able to once he helps Adam get "made." When Peter is tried for the murders he and Adam execute, he is offered a place in the Witness Protection Program, but refuses. Peter is acquitted and assumes things will be fine until Adam blames him for killing another member of the mob and targets Magdalena, her brother and Peter. Peter realizes then that he has to go undercover.
One day, while making his rounds in his new identity, Peter encounters a patient who knew him in the Mafia. The patient tells him that he has called someone so that Peter will be targeted if the patient dies. What happens after that is an action packed, thrilling ending.
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell is a fast-paced thriller with a bit of a medical mystery thrown in. There are a lot of twists and turns in the story, but it's not hard to follow the plot. Peter's attitude reminded me a little bit of Dr. House. While I was reading this book, I could picture it being made into a movie. I really enjoyed it, even though it has some foul language and can get a bit gruesome at times. Gory scenes don't usually bother me in a book, but I have to admit that the one at the end of this one made me cringe a little bit.
Josh Bazell is a medical resident, and he has a Bachelor's in Writing. Beat the Reaper is his first novel. He included some interesting medical footnotes in this book. He is currently working on his second novel, and I can't wait to read it. I wonder when he sleeps.