Mortal Remains

An old murder stirs up memories.:
Peter Clement scores with "Mortal Remains," a crackerjack medical thriller. Dr. Mark Roper is a dedicated country doctor in Hampton Junction, a small town in upstate New York. He is shocked when the body of Kelly McShane is pulled up from a lake, twenty-seven years after she mysteriously disappeared. Kelly used to baby-sit for Mark and he idolized her. It was no secret that she was anxious to leave her abusive husband, Chaz Braden, and there were hints that she had a mysterious lover. Mark decides to investigate Kelly's death, especially since the police regard her murder as a cold case that is unlikely to be solved. Helping Mark with his investigation is Dr. Earl Garnet, who knew Kelly when they were both medical students. As their probe deepens, the two doctors risk becoming the next victims of a murderer who wants to keep old secrets buried. This story could have been trite in the hands of a lesser writer. Clements uses the "murder victim found many years later" formula skillfully. He develops his characters with care and brings his story to life with vivid descriptions, interesting medical details, and a sharply delineated plot with some surprising twists and turns. Dr. Roper is a sympathetic protagonist, a compassionate and hard-working doctor who has a special relationship with his elderly and isolated patients. His adversaries are complex individuals with hidden motives, and there are plenty of red herrings to keep even the sharpest reader off balance. If you like medical thrillers with lots of tension, varied characters, a well-developed plot, and a touch of romance, then you will probably find "Mortal Remains" both engrossing and entertaining.

The mystery's boring but the prose is frightful:
You're supposed to show'em, not tell'em. This is almost purely a tell'em book. The story unfolds not through the action of the characters, but rather through a series of stilted, implausible dialogs in which every twitch of the lips and blink of the eyes somehow reveals the deepest thoughts and feelings of everyone. And not to an omniscient narrator, but rather to the characters themselves. This book is full of psychics and empaths. To top it off, the writing is truly dreadful: "Even his calls that afternoon to former classmates who'd worked on the digoxin toxicity cases had yielded nothing but exclamations of surprise at his contacting them and no useful recollections about Chaz's or anyone else's competence with the medication." This sentence means "He called around but no one knew anything." Every page has a sentence like that. In fact, I only finished the novel because I was keen to see the next mangled construction. If you love good writing, don't buy this book.

average at best:
This book was solidly average. It just barely held my interest enough to finish it. If the lead character hadn't been so obtuse, the plot could not have gone on. The characters were developed fairly well, but the plot was based on educated people not using their intelligence or common sense.

Medical personnel will enjoy this read.:
Clement's Mortal Remains is a medical thriller for medically trained people. The book makes extensive use of medical terminology and jargon to the extent that a layperson would find comprehension of some scenes challenging. Though he is careful to write out anagrams and acronyms commonly used in a medical setting, he seldom explains the meaning of these phrases, detracting from the tension that knowledge of these phrases would give. For example, he explains DONT is the medical anagram for dextrose, oxygen, Narcan, and thiamine, and he explains that this is the basic approach for treating an unconscious or comatose patient. He neglects, however, to connect how following this procedure could make a life-or-death difference in the patient's existence, thus depriving an unknowing reader of the scene's tension. Having a strong medical background, I enjoyed this read. A layperson may not find it quite as thrilling, however. Still, I'd recommend it to fans of ER and Discovery Health.

A Graphic and Gripping Medical Thriller:
Charismatic, compassionate Dr. Earl Garnet, Peter Clement's series hero, has a problem. More than a quarter of a century after his residency days at New York City Hospital, he's solidly established in his chosen profession, living happily in Buffalo with his obstetrician wife, Janet, and their young son...life is good. However, Coroner Mark Roper and Sheriff Dan Evans' sensational discovery of the 'mortal remains' of his fellow student, old friend and former lover, Dr. Kelly McShane Braden, in the murky depths of an upstate lake at Hampton Junction, NY, twenty-seven years after her mysterious disappearance threatens that serene existence and puts his own life in jeopardy once he commits to actively involving himself in Roper's decision to proceed with a thorough investigation into what is now an obvious case of murder. Unhappily married to abusive Dr. Charles 'Chaz' Braden, IV (son of prominent and powerful Dr. Charles Braden, III)at the time of her disappearance, Kelly came to Earl for help in leaving him the same day that she vanished. Although their connection was never established at the time since 'Chaz' was the primary suspect and the case was eventually shelved for lack of evidence, dedicated Dr. Roper...who knew and loved Kelly from his childhood...is now determined to track down her killer, and Garnet somewhat reluctantly volunteers his assistance. Bad mistake! Suddenly felled by a mysterious illness, while Earl fights for his life, Roper doggedly continues to search the past for reasonable answers to present enigmas. He is absolutely convinced that one or both of the Bradens are at the heart of the matter, and once he digs deep enough, he and Dr. Lucy O'Connor, his brilliant and spunky resident assistant, uncover a generation-old cesspool of murder, malpractice and fraud that not only provides ample motivation for Kelly's seemingly inexplicable death (as well as the rapidly mounting death tally at NYCH), but also places them both squarely in harm's way. Once we reach this point in the novel, it's impossible to put the book down until justice is finally served in a genuine nail-biter of a tour de force finale. Anyone at all familiar with Earl Garnet's previous walks on the wilder, darker side of his profession has already experienced Peter Clement's enormous talent for turning the nuts and bolts of modern medicine's issues and technology into complex, jet-propelled, reader-friendly medical thrillers. What I also thoroughly appreciate is his equal talent for creating protagonists that move and intrigue me. Aside from an exceptionally strong cast of supporting characters, something that I thought was particularily interesting about "Mortal Remains" is that Dr. Clement took the risk of subordinating his well-established series hero in favor of spot-lighting two new, secondary characters: Mark and Lucy. That gamble really worked for me and added a great deal to my enjoyment of this wonderful addition to an extremely solid series.