Beat the Reaper

October 27, 2008
Making a hit man turned medical intern a sympathetic figure would be a tall order for most authors, but first-time novelist Bazell makes it look easy in this breezy and darkly comic suspense novel. The Locanos, a mob family, take in 14-year-old Pietro Brwna (pronounced “Browna”) after a couple of thugs gun down the grandparents who raised him in their New Jersey home. Bent on revenge, Pietro pursues the killers and executes them a year later. Impressed by Pietro’s performance, David Locano recruits Pietro as a hit man. After more traumas, Pietro tries to make a break from his past by entering the witness protection program. Now known as Peter Brown, he eventually lands a position as a doctor at a decrepit Manhattan hospital, where by chance a former Mafia associate turns up as a patient and threatens to rat him out. The hero’s wry narrative voice, coupled with Bazell’s artful use of flashbacks to sustain tension and fill in Pietro’s past, are a winning combination.

December 1, 2008
The past comes knocking for a physician with a fistful of secrets.

Medical resident Bazell opens his debut novel with a bone-crunching interlude between Manhattan ER doctor Peter Brown and a mugger whom he beats senseless, then treats for injuries. Brown soon confesses that his real name is Pietro Brnwa. He 's a former hit man whose lethal trade drove him into the witness-protection program, where he reinvented himself as a pill-popping trauma physician. "It 's a weird curse, when you think about it, " says the killer turned doc. "We 're built for thought, and civilization, more than any other creature we 've found. And all we really want to be is killers. " The past catches up with Brown when a terminal patient at the hospital recognizes him as the mob assassin called "Bearclaw. " The patient threatens to out Brown if he does not work to save the man 's life. Bazell 's profane, hyperactive novel is readable and fun, and no fan of shoot- 'em-ups or medical dramas can afford to miss it. Among the book 's highlights is a riotous set of doctor 's rounds that find Brown making out with a cancer patient, chasing down a wheelchair-bound fugitive and suffering a particularly vile needle stick.

A wildly funny mashup between genres that makes ER and St. Elsewhere look tame.

(COPYRIGHT (2008) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from December 15, 2008
Pietro Brnwa (aka Peter Brown) is a hospital intern who looks like an Easter Island monolith with lots of moxie. No Dr. Kildare, the former hit man has brought to his new position a thorough working knowledge of internal medicine. As part of a Witness Protection Program, he's crafted a new identity, until a former colleague is admitted to the hospital ward, and Peter's cover starts to unravel. A propulsive, savvy read featuring characters both well shaded and shady, this debut thriller by a physician polymath with a BA in writing from Brown also offers the garnish du jour in the form of elaborate and funny footnotes (à la David Foster Wallace). You can prescribe this to fans of Carl Hiaasen and quirky abrasive fiction, although anyone whose future plans include a trip to a hospital may want to steer clear, as Bazell is almost too informative about life behind the surgical mask. Doctors are pill-popping automatons, and when a surgeon tells you that you "have a chance," what he means is that he needs a bigger boat. Heartily recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 9/15/08.]Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2008
Who would have thought that extreme violence liberally sprinkled with obscenities could be both funny and tender? Thats the case with this first-person story of Dr. Peter Brown, a successful Mafia hit man as a teenager who enters witness protection and turns to medicine. After the grandparents who raised him are murdered when hes 14, Brown is virtually adopted by the family of his best friend, Adam Locano, and his desire for revenge is channeled by Adams father into killing by contract. A falling-out with the Locanos, after Peter throws Adam out a sixth floor window (for ample reason), leads to his new life. But when he runs into a patient from his old world at the Manhattan hospital where hes now an intern, it appears his own death warrant may have been signed. First-novelist and medical resident Bazell appears to have had as much fun writing this fast-paced, absorbing entertainment (complete with romantic subplot) as many will reading it.A remarkably accomplished debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)