Code Crisis

by Joe Purpura

Overview

Winner—National Indie Excellence Awards, Medical Thriller

 

This fast-paced thriller that follows a lonely gynecologist who risks everything for love and his country will engage you until its final, explosive scene.

 

Dr. Vince DeLuca would normally take a Tito’s straight up with two olives after a ruptured ectopic pregnancy nearly flatlined a patient. Maybe follow it up with a one-night stand to chase away memories of the trauma that’s kept his life stagnant for so long.

     But when he overhears one of his recovering patients—married to the CEO of a defense contractor—mumbling about “stingers,” “revenge,” and her affair with a mysterious man named Salaam, Vince’s PTSD alights. Sure, it could just be the ramblings of a woman on too much morphine, or she could be talking about the missing anti‑aircraft weapons he read about and a highly sought-after terrorist.

     Vince decides to leave it to the FBI, not suspecting that they would send him Carolyn, a drop-dead gorgeous, slightly insane CIA agent who needs his help. Vince is soon thrown into the fray and finds himself both utterly in love and using everything he ever learned in his medical career—including how to clamp a subclavian artery with a zip tie—to help home in on the terrorists’ plot, but not before they discover him and come looking for blood.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798886450132
Publisher:	Greenleaf Book Group Press
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	360
Sales rank:	688,594
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Joseph Purpura, MD, is an obstetrician-gynecologist, patient safety expert, and award-winning faculty member at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He lives in Santa Barbara, CA. This is his first novel.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“An exquisitely developed and propulsive novel that delivers high tension, humor, and magnetic characters in equal measure. Code Crisis is not only an addictive read, it shines with the authenticity of the author’s insights into medicine, criminality, and the emotions that make us human.”
—T.C. Boyle, author of I Walk Between the Raindrops (2022) and PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction winner World’s End (1987)

“Joe Purpura’s stunning debut features Vince DeLuca, a doctor battling loss and burn out who stumbles onto a sinister plot revealed when his patient mumbles details under anesthesia. Purpura, an MD by training, weaves action and gritty tradecraft but never loses sight of DeLuca’s humanity and the result is a novel that’s impossible to put down.”
—Jamie Freveletti, award-winning author of the Emma Caldridge series and Robert Ludlum’s The Janus Reprisal

Editorial Reviews

01/16/2023

Blending the thriller genre with a welcome sense of everyday reality and a splash of romance, the debut from Purpura, an obstetrician-gynecologist, creates verisimilitude by drawing on a world he knows well to ground a tense, twisty, high-stakes adventure. The charming Dr. Vince DeLuca, a gynecologist at the Santa Barbara Community Hospital, is smart and snarky, and knows his way around the hospital. But when one of his patients hands him the name and number of a mysterious arms dealer, Vince is thrown into a world of missiles, arms, and terror attacks. And at the center of it all is Carolyn, a drop-dead gorgeous CIA agent who threatens to topple his entire world. Will Vince survive this foray into uncharted territory?

Right off the bat, Purpura sets the scene of a typical day at the hospital, and establishes, with telling detail and crisp prose, the dynamics of its various constituents, from doctors to nurses to patients. But within the first few pages, the story shifts from what seems a typical hospital drama, to something more thrilling. The medical material is convincing, of course, but Purpura’s descriptions of the tradework, attitudes, and shoptalk of the CIA, FBI, and international outfits like Al Qaeda also ring true, suggesting a gritty, messy reality.

That verisimilitude helps sell some plot twists that might strain credulity, especially when several come in quick succession, not always leaving readers time to recover from one jolt before the next. Still, Purpura’s inviting voice, witty characters, persuasive milieu, and fast-moving—even hurtling—plot ensure readers are hooked till the very end. Despite the global conflicts at its heart, Code Crisis is often funny, even charming, with asides about the misery of cooking for one or the possibility that the government “must have some hidden kick-ass woman factory near Quantico and Langley.” That doesn’t slow the action or suspense, though. Lovers of fast-paced thrillers will look forward to more from Purpura.

Takeaway: This action-packed thriller debut pits a doctor and a CIA agent against a terrorist plot.

Great for fans of: Daniel Kalla, Peter Palmieri’s Blood Moon.

Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A-

BookLife Reviews

2023-01-05
A troubled doctor becomes embroiled in a terrorist conspiracy in Purpura’s debut thriller.

In 2024, Vince DeLuca is a skilled obstetric surgeon in Santa Barbara, California, but he’s a depressed, alcoholic, and solitary person in his personal life. When his patient Jackie Carter needs emergency surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, she confesses, in her fentanyl stupor, that her pregnancy was the result of an extramarital affair with a man named Salaam. Vince also finds out that she and her lover are part of a plan to acquire missiles to attack the United States as revenge for the Iraq War. The doctor, who lost his betrothed, Helen, in the 9/11 terror attacks, feels compelled to act, and he brings this information to the FBI. Soon, Special Agent Carolyn Talbot arrives to work with Vince to uncover more information on Jackie and her role in the conspiracy, and an instant attraction sparks between her and the surgeon. Later, Vince finds himself the target of jihadis, and further secrets are revealed as he willingly becomes an informant for both the FBI and CIA. As he helps uncover connections to Jackie’s husband, a military contractor named Brent, he narrowly escapes death himself. Purpura, who’s an obstetrician and gynecologist, has created a sympathetic narrator in Vince, whose dour, piteous characterization believably motivates several rash decisions even as his work as a physician remains pristine. The book’s plot loses its momentum at times as it tries to balance Vince’s personal life with the somewhat far-fetched terrorism plot. Also, although Jackie is important early on, she remains out of the picture for most of the book, as the middle third focuses more on Carolyn and Vince’s relationship. The way that Purpura draws on his medical knowledge in compelling ways and his writing about Vince’s grieving process can be poignant, as when the protagonist wrestles with a new relationship: “I want to watch her think, hear her sarcasm, her innuendos, her confidence—I want all of her. Next to me. Woven inside me.”

A spy tale that works best as a character study of grief.

Kirkus Reviews