Life Support

September 1, 1997
Proving that the world of microbiology is a fertile medium for horror, Gerritsen follows Harvest, her bestselling hardcover debut, with this spine-tingling medical chiller. Toby Harper, an overworked 38-year-old night-shift ER physician at a private Boston hospital, inadvertently allows a 76-year-old man with strange neurological symptoms to wander off and disappear into the night. She soon finds herself caught in a web of intrigue that centers around experimental anti-aging treatments administered by Dr. Carl Wallenberg, an imperious endocrinologist at Brant Hill, a retirement community catering to aging but upscale clientele. After a second elderly man from the same residential population dies with similar symptoms, Harper, fearful of a threat to public health, demands an autopsy over Dr. Wallenberg's objections. The postmortem reveals the cause of death as Creutzfeldt-Jakob (Mad Cow) Disease, and Harper wins an ally in the medical examiner. Despite the best efforts of the Brant Hill management to thwart her, Harper uncovers a trail pointing to the "age rejuvenation" experiments. Suddenly but not surprisingly, her already overburdened life falls apart. A sympathetic Brant Hill doctor is murdered while trying to reach her; and she is accused of the physical abuse of her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Underlying the chase is a subplot involving a pair of mysteriously impregnated prostitutes. The pieces in this adeptly crafted medical Rubik's cube don't click into place until the final page. Gerritsen, who was a practicing physician, and who honed her novelistic skills writing Harlequin Romances, adeptly integrates medical details into a taut and troubling thriller. Author tour; simultaneous S&S audio release.

May 1, 1997
Another medical thriller from Gerritsen, who one-upped Robin Cook with her best-selling first novel, Harvest.

July 1, 1997
Brant Hill Clinic and Residential Care Facility houses wealthy elderly persons who want to find the fountain of youth. Coincidentally, the home-care aide for emergency room doctor Toby Harper's mother is an associate of researcher Carl Wallenberg, who, with fetal brain tissue implants, seeks the same spring. Toby herself eventually strikes most of the other characters in Gerritsen's cleverly developed thriller as paranoid (of course, she's not). The story leading to that suspicion opens in the ER with Toby's embarrassment when the son of a patient asks to see his father, present only a moment ago. Then two prostitutes give birth to ugly somethings, neither monsters nor tumors. There must be answers to these mysteries. Trying to find them, however, Toby and medical examiner Dan Dvorak nearly die as the trail winds to--ta-da!--Brant Hill. The second medical thriller from internist Gerritsen, who has ditched medicine for full-time writing, seems scarcely to need the aggressive marketing campaign scheduled for it. Reader word-of-mouth alone ought to move it. ((Reviewed July 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)