Product Description

Late one hot summer night, a beautiful young actress named Eden Hale -- only hours removed from breast-augmentation surgery, and writhing in pain -- stumbles to the telephone and dials 911. Within minutes, an ambulance rushes her to San Francisco's Mercy Hospital. But by the time she arrives, she is dying, fast, of a mysterious, unrecognizable condition.

Dr. Carroll Monks, the ER physician on duty, races to sort through her baffling symptoms in the few minutes he has left to save her. Monks has a sudden insight and, against the advice of his peers, risks a radical treatment, which will prove to be either a brilliant maneuver or a potentially deadly mistake. It fails. Eden Hale, vibrantly healthy and barely twenty-five years old, is dead.

The fallout is immediate and intense. The plastic surgeon who operated on Eden -- Dr. D. Welles D'Anton, whose reputation as a surgical guarantor of perfection and agelessness has conferred on him a guru-like status -- blames Monks for her death. Criticism from Monks's hospital colleagues quickly follows and the threat of a lawsuit is not far behind. Monks's career is in jeopardy, but his own guilt and uncertainty are what haunt him worst of all.

Convinced there's a hidden cause to Eden's death, Monks starts to delve into her past. Despite roadblocks that spring up in his path, he soon learns that the former prom queen was not the all-American girl she seemed to be: she was caught up in the world of pornography, and was even, possibly, having an illicit affair with D'Anton. Then Monks uncovers a secret that is far more frightening: other young women in D'Anton's care have wound up missing, dead, or horribly disfigured.

In his search for the truth, Monks is drawn into a culture of unimaginable wealth and vanity -- only to discover that he is being used as a pawn in a decadent game of glamour and cruelty, one that places him in the crosshairs of a deadly psychopath.

With To the Bone, Neil McMahon -- described by the Chicago Tribune as "a cross between Raymond Chandler and Thomas Harris" -- provides a heart-pounding journey into a world of murder and vanity gone wild that you won't soon forget, and demonstrates why he's been called "an author to remember" and "a writer you're going to be hearing a lot about."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #972951 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Released on: 2003-09-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This exhilarating new medical thriller by the author of Twice Dying and Blood Double brings back sleuthing physician Carroll Monks, plunging him into personal jeopardy. Monks is on duty at San Francisco's Mercy Hospital when a beautiful young woman is brought to the emergency room in a coma. He makes a radical attempt to save her life by administering a blood thinner; the attempt is unsuccessful, and the patient dies. The girl's enraged parents intend to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit against Monks that could ruin his career. Wracked with guilt, Monks sets out to investigate the patient's history. As he soon learns, the dead woman, Eden Hale, was a model and aspiring actress reduced to doing porn films. Delving further, Monks becomes convinced that there's more to the girl's death than simple malpractice. Specifically, his suspicions center on Dr. Welles D'Anton, San Francisco's premier plastic surgeon, who caters to the rich and beautiful, and who operated on Eden shortly before her death. D'Anton is arrogant but expert-hardly the type to make a mess of a relatively simple procedure. Thus, Monks has his work cut out for him. This exciting and tautly written thriller crackles with suspense and narrative tension throughout. The hospital scenes are believable and the plastic surgery angle is convincingly detailed. Monks, a most engaging medical detective, is at his best with his back to the wall, and McMahon comes into his own with this scalpel-sharp effort.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Emergency-room physician Carroll Monks returns in his third adventure, and once again the San Francisco doctor has to moonlight as an amateur sleuth to solve a mystery. This one is particularly important to Monks, since it involves one of his own patients, a beautiful young woman who died under his care. Facing charges of malpractice from the girl's parents, Monks follows the trail of clues he gleans from the body. Mysteries featuring physicians as sleuths are plentiful, but the Monks mysteries manage to follow the basic formula while being different from most of their competitors. McMahon is a more stylish writer than many medical-thriller authors--far superior, for example, to Robin Cook. His plotting is different, too: while there's plenty of medical detail, as the formula requires, he approaches the story as though it were a police procedural. Just like the good ol' gang at McBain's 87th Precinct, McMahon forces Monks to follow the clues one lead at a time. An excellent series propelled by solid plotting and an intelligent protagonist. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"A deftly crafted tale with engaging characters blending gripping action, high suspense and medical intrigue." -- Kathy Reichs, author of BARE BONES

"An excellent series...McMahon is a stylish writer." -- Booklist

"Exhilarating...crackles with suspense and narrative tension throughout." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"TO THE BONE is a compelling novel by a first rate writer. I urge you to read it." -- Robert B. Parker, author of BACK STORY

Customer Reviews

The high price of beauty.
Dr. D. Welles D'Anton is a plastic surgeon for the rich and famous. He takes pride in removing physical imperfections from the women whom he transforms with his scalpel. However, as we see in Neil McMahon's medical thriller, "To the Bone," sometimes the pursuit of beauty is just not worth it.

Dr. Carroll Monks is an emergency room physician, employed in a San Francisco hospital, who is suffering from burnout. He has a failed marriage under his belt, children he rarely sees, and a borderline drinking problem. His girlfriend, Martine, seems ready to move on.

Monks is on duty when a beautiful young woman named Eden Hale is brought in to the ER in excruciating pain. The day before, Eden had been Dr. D'Anton's surgical patient. Now, the young woman is suffering from a rare blood clotting disorder with no obvious cause. Dr. Monks valiantly tries a controversial treatment to treat Eden, but he fails to save her. The fallout from this episode may cost Dr. Monks his job.

In an effort to prove that he was not responsible for Eden's death, Monks, along with his private investigator friend, Stover Larrabee, decide to look into Eden's background. They discover that the world of the rich, beautiful, and famous is, ironically, one of ugliness, insecurity, jealousy, and selfishness. Delving into the depressing world of the "beautiful people," Monk learns that there are individuals who look good physically, but who are even more emotionally burned out than he is.

The best moments in "To the Bone" are those that deal with the medical problems in the ER. The book falters when McMahon resorts to stereotypes in his exploration of the surgically enhanced women who rely on plastic surgery to stay young. There is another plot in "To the Bone" that deals with a serial killer. This plot is underdeveloped and the resolution comes out of left field.

"To the Bone" makes the valid point that the worship of physical beauty is a losing proposition. In addition, those who live for the moment, without any regard for the long-term consequences of their behavior, are foolish and self-destructive. Unfortunately, with the exception of Dr. Monks, who is a fully developed, three-dimensional character, "To the Bone" is as shallow as the beautiful women it depicts.

Engaging, fast-paced medical suspense story
Emergency room Doctor Carroll Monks is disturbed when a beautiful woman fails to respond to his treatment. Healthy young women shouldn't die--and when he notices strange bruisings, he orders powerful and non-standard treatment. The treatment fails and Monks is left wondering if he failed, or if someone else was responsible for Eden Hale's death. Because Eden was recovering from breast implant surgery, there is the possibility of complications and Dr. D'Anton, plastic surgeon to the beautiful people, is an obvious suspect. After all, how did a woman like Eden even afford D'Anton's price?

In this fast-paced story, author Neil McMahon introduces a string of suspects. The plastic surgeon, his sculpter-wife who once had an affair with Eden, the beautiful assistant, and the tough and secretive nurse all have possibilities. But as Monks and his friend, private detective Larrabee, investigate, they discover that D'Anton has been associated with other bizarre events and even a missing girl. Could Eden's death be only the tip of an obscene nightmare? McMahon occasionally steps into the point-of-view of a serial killer, indicating that Monks is onto something larger and more dangerous than he imagines.

Monks makes an interesting character with his woman troubles, his problems with excess drinking (not the man I'd want working on me in an emergency room), and his obsession for discovering the truth. Playing to society's strangely ambiguous feelings about doctors who create beauty, McMahon maintains the suspense and keeps the pages turning.

Fast
See storyline above.

Though somewhat short and a little light on character depth (it's been many books ago since I've read his last one so I don't remember the characters), this McMahon medical thriller was satisfying. This one is comparable to McMahons previous novels.

Recommended