Opening line: So I’m on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me!
Josh Bazell’s debut novel Beat the Reaper packs a whole lot of blood, guts and humor into one helluva page-turner. I picked it up on the basis of a couple very strong recommendations and had a gas with it.
The crux of the action spans a single night at Manhattan Catholic Hospital where our first-person protagonist, Peter Brown, is a doctor doing his residency. He gets through the night, high on Moxfane, in a quest to avoid being killed. During the course of this night he not only sees to a number of patients with various ailments (a man suffering from “ass pain”, a woman who is scheduled to have her leg amputated, a war veteran with gangrenous feet resulting from complications from diabetes, etc. ) that are described in sometimes gross-out detail (Bazell has a BA in English lit and writing from Brown University and an MD from Columbia), but also fights off a number of assaults and breaks his own leg in an escape attempt.
Because Peter Brown is also Pietro “Bearclaw” Brnwa, a former mob hit man now a member of the Federal Witness Protection Program. When one of his new patients, who happens to be terminal, recognizes him, shit hits the fan. The patient thinks Dr. Brown is there to whack him, and with a phone call creates a situation where, in the event of his death, the mob people who would love nothing more than to find Bearclaw Brnwa will be alerted to where he can be found.
Through the course of the book Dr. Brown reveals his history, how his grandparents – who raised him in the absence of both mother and father – were killed by mob wannabes looking to be “made”, and how this drove him to seek out mob connections in order to ultimately avenge their deaths. It just turned out he had a natural aptitude for fighting and killing people. Between scenes in the hospital we see Brown’s life story and how he got to the place he is. Violence is rampant in the book, and there is a thread of humor that makes the book laugh-out-loud funny many times. Of particular interest are little footnotes scattered throughout that provide more detail to statements made on the page. For example, in a section describing how he loves Dexedrine because the pill is shield-shaped with a line down the middle so it looks like a vulvae, a footnote is referenced that says:
In fact, the medical word for pubic hair, “escutcheon,” means “shield,” although in free-range humans only women’s pubic hair is shield-shaped. Men’s is naturally diamond-shaped, pointing up toward the navel as well as down toward the groin. Which is why women who shave their pubic hair into a diamond shape subconsciously skeeze you out.
This book is a perfect mix of bloody, crime-ridden action and amusing anecdotal insight into all the bullshit that surrounds the medical profession, plus some interesting little factual nuggets. For a quick, exciting read that is a gruesome kick in the ass, one can do a lot worse than this book. Highly recommended.
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