A bit of a blow from Ablow (Murder Suicide - Keith Russell Ablow)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Murder Suicide - Keith Russell Ablow
Date:	08/05/09 (82 review reads)
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John Snow is a professor at M.I.T., but he is not a well man, he is suffering from a rare form of epilepsy which is threatening to take away his most valued possession, his mind. Luckily for John there is an operation to cure him, however it's not without its problems, the operation will leave him unable to remember even the closest members of his familt, his wife, his children and his mistress.

The morning of the operation comes round and we find John in an alleyway with a gun at his chest. John is saying "you can't do this", but is he talking to an assailant or is he talking to himself? The gun shot is heard by a medic, and an ambulance rushes him to the emergency room, but the doctors cannot save him.

The police are determined to believe that it was suicide, but the coroner is not prepared to rule out murder, so the police call on the skills of forensic psychiatrist Dr Frank Clevenger to help them untangle the mess.

This is the first book I've read by Keith Ablow, and whilst it was a reasonable book, I wouldn't say it was a great book. There was nothing about the book, either in the style of writing or the storyline that made me want to rush out and find any other books he'd written. But it wasn't so awful that I would begrudge paying 50p in a charity shop if I ever came across another one.

I did find some of the writing slightly irritating, at the beginning of the book, when the medics are trying to save John, the author starts talking about pericardiocentesis, membranous sacs, pericardiums , etc, and it's not that I don't know what they mean, because I spent years as a teenager helping my sister swot for medical exams. But I read a crime drama to be entertained by all thing criminal, not to gen up on medical terminology. I can almost imagine the author wiggling his fingers beside his head, singing "Nah, nah, nana, nah, I know more than you do", because there are plenty of other ways of writing things, without trying to come across as a smartarse.

I didn't get a feel for any of the characters either, none of them stood out as being overly sympathetic, or absolutely dastardly, they evoked the same sorts of feelings that extras in a film do. It seemed that most of them, even the main characters, were there just to keep up the numbers. And although that makes it sound really awful, it did work in a strange kind of way, but I just felt I would like to find out what happens next, rather than get the "OMG, I can't stop now, I have to find out what happens!!!" type of feeling.

Summary: A book to rent from the library rather than to buy.