The Procedure: 3 (Dr. Earl Garnet)

Heartpounding suspense hailed Entertainment Weekly of Peter Clements first medical thriller Lethal Practice. Now the former ER physician has done it again--combining his technical expertise with a page-burning plot to create a chillingly plausible novel of suspense.. With authentic detail and a surgeons precision Clement captures the tense electrifying atmosphere of a big city hospital turned into a flash point. For in Fatal Medicine one threat is more dangerous than contagion: the threat of human beings deciding who should live and who should die. . . .. Death is a daily sometimes hourly occurrence at St. Vincents Hospital in Buffalo New York. Now in his pressure cooker career Dr. Earl Garnet has broken the cardinal rule of modern medicine: he publicly blames a powerful HMO for practicing no-fault murder in the death of an eighteen-month-old baby. The HMO swiftly strikes back igniting a debilitating boycott of the hospital. But after several accidents nearly cost patients their lives the true bloodletting begins. A doctor is found sprawled out in the parking lot his throat cut ear to ear.. Blamed for instigating the chaos Earl Garnet knows that he faces more than a deadly power play. The doctor may have uncovered a conspiracy reaching from the halls of one of the nations most influential HMOs to a small experimental clinic in Mexico where yet another of his patients went for treatment and disappeared. To find answers Garnet must wade deep into the murky surreal workings of todays health care industry.. Smart tough crackling with suspense and vivid in its hospital setting this visionary novel instantly places Peter Clement in the distinguished company of Michael Palmer and Robin Cook. Make no mistake: The Procedure is the work of a first-rate physician and an absolutely brilliant storyteller.