Under the Knife

December 19, 2016
Near the start of this suspenseful if uneven thriller from Parsons (Doing Harm), Dr. Rita Wu, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of California (San Diego), wakes up one morning, naked, strapped to an operating table, with no idea how she got there. Soon she hears a voice in her head, a voice that apparently no one else can hear and that controls her mind. The voice belongs to tycoon Morgan Finney, a powerful inventor. As Rita lies helpless on the table, a man who claims to be Morgan Finney tries to assure her that the voice she hears is real—and they need to talk about his wife, Jenny. After this harrowing opening setup, the pace slackens, slowed by too many points of view, including that of Rita’s spurned lover, Dr. Spencer Cameron, until the tight ending. The supporting characters may be flat, but Rita makes a great doctor-in distress, and Parsons does a good job dramatizing how patients often become commercial cogs in medical institutions. Agent: Al Zuckerman, Writers House.

June 18, 2018
Amsterdam surgeon Van de Laar devotes his first book to vivid descriptions of notable surgeries, from ancient times to the present. Trial, error, and gore fill these lively accounts of professionals (and a few amateurs) wielding the scalpel to remedy bodily affliction. Van de Laar captures the drama in the Dallas operating room where Lee Harvey Oswald was admitted with acute injuries to the aorta and interior vena cava. He depicts Italian surgeons using their hands to scoop blood clots out of John Paul II’s abdomen after the 1981 attempt on the Pope’s life, and recounts how a Dutch blacksmith successfully cut into his own body in 1651 to remove a kidney stone. Van de Laar also includes numerous asides on medical topics such as the causes of fever and the art of tying surgical knots. He spotlights famous practitioners, including Rudolf Nissen, who used cellophane—“essentially a sandwich bag”—to wrap a grapefruit-size aneurysm in Albert Einstein, and Malcolm Perry, who was in the operating room for both the Kennedy and Oswald shootings. Fast-paced and lucid, this is medical history not for those with weak stomachs.

September 15, 2018

Readers looking for a history of surgery or in-depth descriptions of 28 operations in Dutch laparoscopic surgeon van de Laar's first book will be disappointed. This is a compilation of articles published by the author in the surgical journal Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Heelkunde. The result is an inconsistent and disjointed narrative. The operations mentioned are more notable for the patient than for the procedure: the intubation of John F. Kennedy after he was shot, the abdominal surgery on Pope John Paul II, and Louis XIV's fistula. There are the nonsurgical cases of Bob Marley and baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who both refused to have their toes amputated, and the chapter "Obesity," which focuses on the gluttonous habits of popes and only fits the book's theme owing to an added description of bariatric surgery. The author is at his best exploring the evolution of a device or procedure such as laparoscopy and electrocoagulation. The stories have a gossipy tone and plenty of trivia. VERDICT For readers interested in medical oddities and strange stories told in a conversational manner, this is a solid choice. Those searching for a history of surgery will want to look elsewhere.--Susanne Caro, North Dakota State Univ., Fargo.

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