Beat the Reaper: A Novel
by Josh Bazell
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Book Reviews of Beat the Reaper: A Novel
Book Review: Probably make a great movie!
Summary: 4 Stars
Peter Brown, former mob hitman, now an emergency room doctor thanks to the Witness Protection Program is having a bad day. Mugged on his way to work, charts and patients stacked up, and now a patient recognizes him as a former hitman and threatens to disclose his identity and location to the mob. And its not even lunch time yet.
Beat the Reaper is filled with such interesting characters that the reader has to occasionally stop and wonder exactly how the author put himself through school. After all, aren't authors supposed to write what they know? And if Bazell actually knows these people, well, I'm just sayin', one wonders!
Beat the Reaper is Josh Bazell's debut novel. Bazell is a medical resident who has both a MD from Columbia and BA in writing from Brown. He also has a wicked sense of humor. As you read this novel, you want to believe its all fiction, that the questionable treatments, cheap hookups, illicit drug use, and even the disregard for basic hygiene within the hospital setting can't really be true. But Bazell has the uncanny ability to make us go..."ewwww" while in our gut, we sort of understand that he's probably writing about what he's actually seen. It kind of makes you want to head to your local witchdoctor instead of the local ER!
I'm not usually bothered by graphic descriptions, but I'll admit that the end was almost too much for me. Graphic, yep. Gory, double yep. But that wasn't really my problem with it. My problem was that I just didn't buy it as a viable option to the character. The situation was well described, the reasons for the protagonists decision explained thoroughly, and yet, I just couldn't believe it could actually happen. But it was most certainly an unexpected solution to the problem, you've got to give the author that! He is darn clever and creative! But still...uh....ewwwww.........
Beat the Reaper is funny and graphic, witty and gory. Probably not a book for reader who dislikes graphic bloody description,but I liked it nonetheless, and look forward to Bazell's second book.
Book Review: You Can't Beat This For a Fun Quick Debut Novel Read!
Summary: 5 Stars
Beat the Reaper is a really fun, fast read. It's clever, granted far fetched and not the most realistic novel in the world but that's what makes it fun. The author through the book's narrator (main character Peter) compares those trying to kill him near the end to the Joker doing something similar to Batman then leaving the scene instead of watching him die, so you know the unrealism is intentional and the author has included it to be a more entertaining adventure for the reader. And enjoyable it is! The book also has a number of footnotes (granted not everyone's cup of tea) but they do add to the enjoyment of the novel and you do learn what some medical instruments, procedures and technology are. It funny that those who are critical of the book being unrealistic usually also criticise the inclusion of the footnotes as without them, the author wouldn't have been able to use realistic hospital dialogue. Or if he still used it you wouldn't have had a clue what was going on. Got to remember this a book where the reader's imagination lets them picture what is going on, unlike say Scrubs where you can see it on the screen.
The plot is unfolded as a narration by Dr Peter Brown of a recent events (set in a New York hospital) and in the much more distant past eventually leading up to him being placed in the hospital 7 years before as part of the witness protection program. The hospital gives you an insight into the American hospital scene through eccentric work colleagues and other characters and through his reactions to patient's, a better understanding of his morals and character. This helps you like him a bit more when he is murdering people for the mob in his previous life and understand why he only wants victims who have done something terrible and ultimately why he wanted out.
Few books these days have the must keep turning the pages, can't put the book down factor. Beat the Reaper is one of them!
Book Review: A disappointment...
Summary: 3 Stars
The premise was good and it started out well, but soon spiraled down into being farce and a disappointment. When I first started reading I thought the author had a great sense of humor and I was reminded of the fun I had reading The House of God: The Classic Novel of Life and Death in an American Hospital way back in the old days. That sense stayed with me until half way through the book when the story shifted into being more about death and the mafia than it did about the edgy world of internship and the practice of medicine.
I was a bit disconcerted, too, about the negativity the author has about patients, doctors and the practices of medicine and surgery. I was an OR nurse and I can honestly say that some of the terms and opinions Josh Bazell expresses -- I have never heard of -- case in point "sucking the plastic dick" for an endotracheal tube placement, for example. As for the author, who is making his life in the practice of medicine as a doctor, I'm sickened by his obvious distaste for his work and his contempt for nurses and patients. I hope he quits medicine. I also hated the way he talked about the patients (as their disease) and the way he popped pills (speed) and had these supposed sexual encounters in inappropriate places with drug reps and patients - I don't THINK so. I guess this scenario might have been this author's fantasy but it's not real world hospital medicine. I do not know any physicians who are this crude.
I had high hopes for the novel, started out giving it a solid 5 stars but that degenerated into a solid 3 by the end of the novel. I guess I found the character less interesting as each chapter ended. Too bad -- I was really wanting to like this one.
By the way, the video review that is posted on amazon is totally misleading so don't use that as any kind of guide for what this book is about.
Pass on it, don't pass it on.
Book Review: When you don't even have a pocketknife handy
Summary: 5 Stars
Do you remember when, in 2003, real-life wilderness hiker Aron Ralston amputated his own forearm with a pocketknife in order to extricate himself from a tight spot? In BEAT THE REAPER, author Josh Bazell delivers an even more excruciating image that had me cringing.
Bazell, with a BA in English Lit and writing and an MD degree, is perhaps uniquely capable of producing this, his first novel. His protagonist, Dr. Peter Brown, is an intern toiling at Manhattan Catholic Hospital. In a previous life before entering a Federal witness protection program, he was Pietro "Bearclaw" Brnwa, a professional hit man for the mob. One day, a patient recognizes Dr. Brown and threatens to rat him out to his old employer. With the specter of his past catching up, Brown's bedside manner slips.
The premise of the book's plot and Brown's background are fresh and unusual enough to engage the reader from the first page. Brown's first-person, irreverent, and no-nonsense perspective and his unorthodox skill set make him a hero of the likes you haven't perhaps seen before. If Bazell continues with the character in subsequent novels, Lee Child's Jack Reacher may have to make room on the stage of contemporary literary Tough Guys.
Of course, the continuation of a character into a book series has its own pitfalls, not the least of which is fan boredom with plots that become too formulaic and a hero that fails to live up to expectations, or worse. (As an example, see the reviews - perhaps mine in particular - for a recent Reacher adventure, Nothing to Lose (Jack Reacher, No. 12).) In the meantime, however, I'm going to applaud the author for the inventiveness of his creation and award an admiring five stars.
Book Review: More like Beat The Sleeper
Summary: 1 Stars
I can't comprehend the effusive gushing over this book. Of course, I did come into it having read the exceptional The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, so perhaps if I had come off of something as mindless as, say, James Patterson, I'd would have appreciated it more. This book is not good. It's not well written, it wanders aimlessly, and it is terrifically boring at the page 50 mark. Dr. Peter Brown, the former mafia hitman known as Bearclaw (an absolutlely ridiculous moniker outside of a Marvel comic book) is a doctor at a Manhattan hospital, who is apparently phenomenal at his job, however all he does is gripe and kvetch about his duties as a healer. The 'good' doctor encounters a patient who knows Peter's secret past, and the race is on for Bearclaw to beat the bad guys before they serve him up. There is nothing about this character, OR his past, that makes him remotely likeable, and Josh Bazell shoehorns into the plot that Peter's grandparents (and guardians) were murdered, and we are force fed (repeatedly) that it is the quest for revenge that brought Peter to the dark side in his formative years, and not at all that his moral compass has no needle. The book is tiresome, achingly dull, and more of a chore to get through than Herman Wouk. The front cover boasts that the book is "Spattered in adrenaline-fueled action and bone-saw sharp dialogue..." I'm not sure what book that is in reference to, but it surely is not this one. If you want a better example of "adrenaline-fueled action" and "bone-saw sharp dialogue", you'd be better off reading Duane Swierczynski's flawed but light-years better offering of "Severance Package". Read this if you must (or if you're being paid to) but don't be surprised if you actually feel dumber for the experience.