A Handful of Ashes

Starred review from March 5, 2018
British author McCarthy’s outstanding sequel to 2016’s The Hollow Men finds medical examiner Harry Kent bemoaning his less-than-successful medical career and hooked on the amphetamines he tells himself he needs to function. To his further dismay, he receives a summons from his troubled, alcoholic former girlfriend, Frankie Noble, now an acting DCI, to look into the death of Dr. Susan Bayliss, who apparently stabbed herself more than once until she severed a major artery. Susan was suspended by London’s Belgrave Hospital for Sick Children, one of the world’s leading pediatric facilities, after she blew the whistle on a cardiac surgeon who lost four young patients in quick succession. Though a previous attempt at a fatal overdose supports the theory that Susan took her own life after losing her job and being publicly vilified, Harry notes marks on her body that suggest someone held her down. McCarthy delivers a startling ending and perfectly blends the whodunit plot with Harry’s struggles with his addiction and his relationship with Frankie. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Co (U.K.).

Starred review from April 1, 2018
The apparent suicide of London cardiothoracic surgeon Susan Bayliss, found in a pool of blood with her brachial artery cut, expands into a much bigger case with Dr. Harry Kent at the core of it. When Kent, who moonlights as a police medical examiner, is called by his ex, Acting DCI Frankie Noble, to certify Bayliss' death, he sees too many anomalies for a suicide, then realizes that the victim was the whistle-blower who recently lost her job and stature for suggesting that the deaths of four young children were the result of risky cardiac surgery she thought was performed to enhance the surgeon's reputation. But Bayliss was a champion of the children's parents?one of whom describes her toddler son's cremated remains as a handful of ashes ?who cooperate with police on what becomes a murder investigation. Despite his stalled medical career, Kent (introduced in McCarthy'sThe Hollow Men, 2016) is a gifted and intuitive doctor who's enlisted by Noble to participate in what becomes an increasingly difficult case with tragic consequences. Medical student McCarthy has created humane, fallible characters?notably Kent and Noble, who struggle with addictions?as he spins a taut plot that's part police procedural, part medical thriller. An unbeatable combination for what's shaping up as a winning series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)