cover image Positive Match (Hc)

Positive Match (Hc)

Tony Chiu. Bantam Books, $22.95 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-553-10283-3

Colorful characters and gleefully nasty plotting give this debut medical thriller a lively pulse. As the novel opens, MedEx, an organ-donor transport firm, lures a small band of healthy but illegal Mexican immigrants into the U.S. and literally guts them for on-demand transplants. Nguyen-Anh Dupree, a Vietnamese-American physician working for Doctors Without Borders in the Mexican state of Chiapas, suspects MedEx of criminal behavior. He alerts two young computer wizes in L.A., whose nimble hacking exposes a link between MedEx and Caduceus 21, a very profitable health care company that's about to launch a private stock offering. Meanwhile, in New York, Maggie Sepulveda, the investment banker hired by Caduceus 21, sees that offering as a breakthrough for her and her firm. But the sadistic murder of Maggie's head CPA and the coded message he'd sent via e-mail generate dire doubts in her. Maggie links ups with Dupree and the hackers, and the four (with help from a drug gang and a lawyer) set out to expose and stop MedEx and Caduceus 21. Chiu tries to show off knowledge of too many worlds here--of East L.A., Mexico, high finance and cyberia--and the plot's a bit over the top. His pacing is breakneck, though, his writing smooth and his villains, rife with money and CIA connections, deliciously heinous. There's little new here, of course (Robin Cook was writing about organ transplant crime a quarter century ago), but Chiu handles his tired theme with panache. BOMC alternate. (Aug.)