Beat the Reaper

Beat the Reaper

Josh Bazell

5 out of 5

You Had Me Until The Fibula

First off, having footnotes in a book of fiction is quite distracting; other then that the book had me flipping pages until the very end where Bazell just seemed to have jumped the shark. Well, almost literally. His main character pulled off something that has never before been done, and hopefully, will never be done again in a book that I read.

Very reminiscent of the books by Charlie Huston, Josh Bazell takes us into two very terrifying worlds. The Mafia and public hospitals - and honestly, I don't know which one terrifies me more. After his grandparents are murdered, a young Pietro Brwna is taken into a mafia family where he tries to avoid the family business but that isn't possible when he feels that he owes the family that has cared for him. He does what he needs to do, he moves on, that is until an ultimate betrayal and Pietro enters the witness protection program. He goes to medical school, works in a hospital that no one in their right might would be a patient at let alone be an attending doctor and runs smack dab into his past.

Pietro is now in a fight for his life and limb. You honestly have to read it to believe it. This is definitely a 24 hour book. It won't let you put it down. The characters are just quirky enough, the pace is unstoppable and the storyline well, let's just say, no good deed goes unpunished.