Bone Dry

Bone Dry is one scary book: fast-paced, authentic, and suspenseful. But what I liked the most were the characters. There was not one major character who didn't feel fully-realized to me. Even the worst bad guy in it was real, which of course made it even scarier. It kept me up all night reading. I know other readers will enjoy it as much as I did.

As a physician one would think that the last place I'd look for entertainment would be medically related literature. But I find myself drawn to it especially when the story is so plausible and the hospital and clinical characters are so true to life as was the case in this exciting and all-to-possible story. The book just whisked you away from the very start and was impossible to put down. There were some truly macabre and twisted methods that the authors came up with to agonizingly terminate at least one of the characters that only someone in the field could have come up with. But it was the premise of the story that made this one of the best medical mysteries I've read in years because this could really happen and it would be relatively easy given what I know of security in the various hospitals I've worked in to pull this off. Finally, the authors' style of inexorably building tension within a framework of making all the medical technology and jargon understandable to the lay reader just added to the pleasure of this diabolical plot. I highly recommend this book.

A real page-turner! What makes this thriller so compelling, is that there is an eery sense of reality to the story although it is fiction. The authors successfully combine the best and worst of human behavior and set their characters within a fragile medical environment. Current advances in cancer treatment coupled with recent hospital scandals makes this mystery all the more plausable. "Bone Dry" is a white-knuckle read 'til the end, which makes it difficult to put down. Wouldn't be surprised to see this one jump from page to screen--it's got all the ingredients.

In San Francisco's Ridgewood Hospital, the staff is upset as the bone marrow to be used in an autologous replacement surgery to save the life of patient Carl Chapman is missing from the lab. Especially shook up is nurse Gina Mazzio, who has been with Carl from the beginning of his cancer treatment and now cannot understand why he seems so stoic about his pending death.Lab worker Faye Lindstron stole the bone marrow at the machinations of her boyfriend Frankie Nellis. She has taken others also as Frankie demands fifty thousand dollars from the near death sufferers or they will die. As Alan Vasquez of administration tries to bury the scandal, Gina and a few other caring medical practitioners struggle to uncover why a simplistic procedure has gone awry not knowing that Frankie will kill to continue his lethal scheme.Medical procedural fans will have a field day with the exciting BONE DRY even with knowing the perpetrators from almost the beginning as authors Bette Golden Lamb and J.J. Lamb use dramatic irony to make Gina question whether Vasquez is the culprit. The story line is action packed never slowing down until the final beach blanket scene. Though Faye is too pathetic a character and Frankie is too evil, readers will devour this strong thriller starring a wonderful Bronx transplant that is quite the lioness when it comes to protecting her cubs (patients).Harriet Klausner