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If the thought of being in hospital brings you out in a cold sweat, you might want to steer clear of Peter Clement's medical thriller MORTAL REMAINS. I was cravenly reduced to reading some of its creepier scenes in daylight! The plot revolves around the discovery of a skeleton at the bottom of a lake in the Adirondacks. Itšs identified as Kelly McShane, a medical student who went missing in 1974. Two men -- Mark Roper, the areašs doctor, and Earl Garnet, a New York ER chief who was with Kelly just before she disappeared -- set out to solve the mystery of who murdered her. The book takes some time to get into its stride, and it's almost as if, early on, you've stumbled into a play in progress. The supporting cast is a tad sketchy and the see-sawing point of view means we never quite get to know the main men in any depth -- I preferred Mark as a character, but the later scenes with Earl were more compelling. Timelines at the start of each section aren't especially helpful, and they make the book feel as if it's an interim measure before a movie happens along. Once the book takes off, though, it's a real page-turner. Clement himself is a doctor who has headed an emergency room in a city hospital, and this knowledge ensures that the later scenes featuring Earl as a patient are electric. This strength meant I was prepared to cut the book a lot of slack. The villain is one step away from moustache-twirling, there's the most infuriating bit of femjep I've read in a while, and the piling on of one disaster on top of another requires a fair bit of suspending of disbelief. But it's a book worth reading -- even if it has made me faintly paranoid about an upcoming hospital appointment!
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, October 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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