The Organ Takers: A Novel of Surgical Suspense

by Richard Van Anderson

Overview

Failed surgeon, David McBride, is in exile from the surgical community after making a costly error in judgment. Down, but not out, he perseveres and is given a second chance to establish a career in surgery. But, as McBride stands on the threshold of a new life, the malignant underside of his fellow man intervenes. Under the threat of violence, David is forced to perform illegal organ harvests in a makeshift operating room hidden in a dilapidated meatpacking warehouse in lower Manhattan. Unable to resolve the excruciating moral dilemma faced each time he invades the body of an unwilling victim, David McBride fights to free himself from the situation, and in the process, loses everything. When he finally loses the last shred of his humanity, he seeks revenge with surgical precision ... and instrumentation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990759713
Publisher:	White Light Press, LLC
Publication date:	10/23/2014
Series:	McBride Trilogy Book 1 , #1
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Richard Van Anderson is a former heart surgeon turned fiction writer. His surgery training took him from the "knife and gun club" of LSU Medical Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, to the famed Bellevue Hospital in Midtown Manhattan. His education as a writer includes an MFA in creative writing from Pine Manor College in Boston, Massachusetts. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife and two sons.

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/12/2015
Robin Cook fans will relish this taut and powerful medical thriller set in Manhattan, the first in a trilogy. Dr. David McBride’s career is in ruins after he delayed reporting that a superior was taking bribes to move patients in need of transplanted organs up the waiting list. Instead of using his superior surgical skills to save lives, David is relegated to working on rats in a research lab. Fortune seems to smile upon him when he’s offered a chance to redeem himself with a probationary period in another residency program. But before he can start that new chapter, David’s corralled by a shady figure who calls himself Mr. White and displays a disturbingly detailed knowledge of every aspect of David’s life. Unless David agrees to perform illegal kidney harvesting and transplants, White will arrange for him to be charged with drug theft. Van Anderson makes good use of his own medical training in the service of a superior page-turner. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly

2015-01-19
In Van Anderson's (The Final Push, 2013) medical thriller, an ex-surgeon is coerced into harvesting organs from unwilling patients.It's been a couple of years since Dr. David McBride lost his medical license due to the misdeeds of his mentor, Dr. Andrew Turnbull. Now he's barely scraping by at a research lab while caring for his father, who has dementia, and his pregnant wife. David gets an offer from the enigmatic Mr. White regarding a plan involving buying and selling organs. The wary doctor agrees, once White threatens his wife, and he's shocked to learn that the people who are "selling" kidneys are drugged homeless men who are anything but volunteers. As the baddies monitor him, he tries to find a way to track the organs to the implanting surgeon, unaware that the guilty party is Dr. Turnbull—the man who essentially ruined his own medical career. Although Van Anderson establishes the good and bad guys early, he presents neither side in easily definable terms. David, for example, is initially sympathetic, due to his sad family and financial situations, but some of the things he does, particularly near the story's end, are morally questionable. Turnbull, meanwhile, may employ unsavory means, but he's trying to fund his company, NuLife, which could eliminate transplant waiting lists. White's motivation is almost admirable; indeed, it's one of the few details readers learn about the man. Later, the story adds Detective Kate D'Angelo to the mix, and her presence causes tension when David is forced to run from both the cops and White's thugs. The story incorporates David's medical background well, such as when he professionally assesses his own injuries after villains shoot at him. The author, a former heart surgeon, weaves medical jargon expertly into the text, although readers may be unfamiliar with some unexplained terminology during David's surgeries. In this engaging novel, the author wields dynamic characters and intelligent prose like a skilled surgeon's instruments.

Kirkus Review

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