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FIRST DO NO HARM
by Larry Karp
Poisoned Pen Press, October 2004
274 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 159058130X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

When Marty announces that he has been accepted into medical school, his father Leo practically has a stroke. When all his bribes and threats cannot change Marty's mind, Leo finally breaks six decades of silence to tell him about his own father, the popular and influential Dr Samuel Firestone.

Leo had just graduated high school in the summer of 1943 and Dr Samuel offered to make the boy his extern, to let him learn medicine and maybe get a pre-med scholar's deferment from having to go fight in the war. Thrilled to spend time with the man both he and the entire town worships, Leo agreed.

Soon Leo was horrified to discover the reasons behind Samuel's great popularity -- a determined belief in putting the needs of the individual over the law. Dr Samuel got his patients whatever they needed, from black market penicillin through falsified medical certificates to illegal surgery. Letting young women 'correct their mistakes' through abortion or under the counter adoptions was one thing. Covering up a murder was another.

Jonas Fleichmann, the only scrap man in town who refused to deal with black market metal, died suddenly at his brother's home. Dr Samuel lists the cause of death as a heart attack and makes sure that the body is quickly buried. Leo is convinced Jonas was poisoned. So, using the excuse of repairing a music box for his girlfriend, he snoops around the junkyard trying to find the truth. All he finds is pain, suffering, and death.

For the first time in his life, Marty begins to understand his reclusive father. However, the story he was told has several gaps. So 60 years later, Marty tries to find out what really happened that terrible summer.

It's hard to categorize FIRST DO NO HARM. It's technically a mystery -- several mysteries, in fact, all building on each other, but none of them solvable by the main narrators Marty and Leo. Readers who want to find all the clues and solve the crime first will be disappointed. (Readers who are jarred by racist epithets will be equally disappointed, as the people in the 1940s speak and act with all the casual prejudice of the time.) Approached as a slice of life story or a psychological novel, though, FIRST DO NO HARM is a compelling story of town tragedies and of sons learning that their fathers, no matter how famous and popular, are shatteringly human.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, September 2004

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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