So far, all the books we have reviewed of this author are Lincoln Rhyme books. See for example, The Kill Room or The Burning Wire. This is my first foray into a book by this author that does not feature the fascinating quadriplegic detective, Lincoln Rhyme. This kicks off the Broken Doll series, a set of four books, all of whom may be short stories.
This is also a very short novel(Is it really a full novel?) less than thirty pages! We recently reviewed Dolan’s Cadillac, also a short story masquerading as a novel, and arguably even The Old Man and The Sea, also recently reviewed here.
But for all that, it is definitely worth a read, and packs a punch like the Lincoln Rhymes series. Let us see what the story is.
Paul Offenbach was in an accident and was being attended to by Dr Stuart Collier as they were traveling to a hospital in an old emergency vehicle. They were traveling in a rural Wisconsin road.
Collier happens to be an emergency physician and Offenbach has him in his pistol sights. Because he had just seen Offenbach kill a blond before getting injured and needing help. The driver of the vehicle is from his gang(?) and he will stay with them until Offenbach has fully recovered.
The assistant Snake, is suspicious but begins to trust Collier when he shows that he did not run away when he could have.
Then Collier operates on Offenbach and the criminal seems to draw out a lot of confessions from the doctor. About Collier’s dad who died in a boating accident. Collier starts off as a physician who would do no harm and even claims that if the killer of his close family needed help, he would try to save that evil man’s life, putting away his emotion to the contrary. But as the talk proceeds, Collier admits to having some people – those with no chances of survival – die and also admits that at that moment, he felt he was doing the right thing. In addition, he admits to feeling some relief and even a sense of power.
When the treatment is done, Offenbach admits to Collier that he, Collier, is not going to get out of it alive. Collier reacts and opens the hatch and jumps out of the running van.
What follows is a tense chase and a bit of the cat and mouse game.
After all this comes the biggest twist in the story, in the last two pages. Of course I do not like to give out spoilers but will leave it to you to find out! It is definitely worth it.
8/10
— Krishna
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