Reading Leahey's second contemporary mystery/medical thriller (after 2000's Broken Machines) to feature private consultant J.J. Donovan is like watching a '30s mystery movie on TV: it might have a great cast, but everyone acts like a bunch of giggly, giddy schoolgirls. Donovan speaks sarcasm as if it were a language, while all the tough guys are rude. The promotional copy states the novel's in the tradition of Elmore Leonard, but this is misleading: Leonard's lowlifes may be blunt and brutal, but they're never rude. The cliché-ridden plot depends too much on characters behaving in ways that may seem plausible on the screen but not on the page. During a Yankees game, a low-level bad guy makes a scene delivering a manila envelope to Donovan's partner, Dr. Boris Mikail Koulomzin. Later, outside the stadium, the bad guy has had second thoughts, for he rams Boris in his car, grabs what he thinks is the original envelope (but isn't) from his injured victim and, in front of a large crowd, escapes. In another familiar twist, the baddie turns up dead the next day in the trunk of his abandoned car. The white-haired villain, Johnny St. John, is a preposterous Hannibal Lecter–like monster. As the body count multiplies, people ask a lot of questions, but nothing is clear until a character out of left field sits the hero down and explains everything. The chilling premise and good-natured tone, plus the authentic medical background, help lift what is otherwise pretty predictable fare. (Apr. 15)
FYI: Leahy is the director of the Office of Clinical Trials at Columbia University/New York Presbyterian Hospital
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