Fourth Procedure - Hardcover

Pottinger, Stanley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345384008 ISBN 13: 9780345384003

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1995

Synopsis

THE FIRST PROCEDURE: The patient is perfect. The theory is borne out. But something goes terribly wrong (.
An accomplished attorney prepares to argue a life-and-death case before a Supreme Court nominee hostile to her cause (.One of the country's leading surgeons, a pioneer in organ transplants, answers an emergency call to assist an operation in progress....And in a morgue in Washington, D.C., a medical examiner and a police detective hover over a body found in a parking lot, a body that has been tampered with....
THE SECOND PROCEDURE: The police are alerted. A pattern is emerging. Time is running out (.
Congressman Jack MacLeod is haunted by an episode that changed his life forever. Now Jack's life is about to explode again: the police arrive at his door. Evidence links him to the strange death of a man who last lived in a halfway house in his New York City district (.
THE THIRD PROCEDURE: Complications terminate it. The risks are mounting. There's only one alternative. (
Suddenly events spin out of control. Backroom deals made by the most powerful men in the country threaten to destroy Jack's political future. The secret from Jack's past falls into the hands of a media savvy opponent who can't wait to use it. And, in the shadows, a plan, so outrageous and unthinkable it will smash every assumption about the limits of the human body, is nearing its shocking conclusion (.
THE FOURTH PROCEDURE: When it happens, it will make medical history. And then no man will be safe....
Combining the best elements of explosive courtroom drama and groundbreaking medical technology with controversial social issues, The Fourth Procedure explores fundamental questions of life and death. It takes the reader beyond the boundaries of today's medicine to an all-too-plausible scenario of a frightening future.
The Fourth Procedure. The most terrifying legal-medical thriller. Ever.
"A mind-boggling medical thriller to end all medical thrillers. It may be the most talked about popular fiction of the season."
--Kirkus Reviews

About this title

From the Inside Flap

OCEDURE: The patient is perfect. The theory is borne out. But something goes terribly wrong (.
An accomplished attorney prepares to argue a life-and-death case before a Supreme Court nominee hostile to her cause (.One of the country's leading surgeons, a pioneer in organ transplants, answers an emergency call to assist an operation in progress....And in a morgue in Washington, D.C., a medical examiner and a police detective hover over a body found in a parking lot, a body that has been tampered with....
THE SECOND PROCEDURE: The police are alerted. A pattern is emerging. Time is running out (.
Congressman Jack MacLeod is haunted by an episode that changed his life forever. Now Jack's life is about to explode again: the police arrive at his door. Evidence links him to the strange death of a man who last lived in a halfway house in his New York City district (.
THE THIRD PROCEDURE: Complications terminate it. The risks are mounting. There's only one alternative. (
Suddenly

Reviews

Mining the emotional cauldron of abortion rights, this superbly crafted medical thriller deftly probes every conceivable angle through characters that would seem cliched if they weren't so visible in today's headlines. Pottinger lays out his riveting debut on a vast canvas, topping it off with a brazen plot twist virtually guaranteed to thrill some readers and appall others?but leave no one unmoved. He has painstakingly assembled a large (though never unwieldy) cast, carefully maneuvering them through interlocking scenarios that are both individually engrossing and collectively formidable. The story is centered on N.Y. congressman Jack MacLeod and organ transplant pioneer Dr. Rachel Redpath, each of whom has lost a loved one to a back-alley abortionist and has made pro-choice politics a priority. This commitment is shared by Rachel's best friend?and Jack's live-in lover?Victoria, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who defends battered women. Added to the potent mix are, among others, an influential, 27-year Senate veteran; the president of a heavily funded anti-abortion society, a strong Washington lobby; and a pro-life appellate judge who becomes Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Such often standard-issue devices as blackmail, dicey pregnancies, bombings and mysteriously appearing corpses are given new vigor in this novel's dexterous plotting. Pottinger handily proves the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, adding ironic twists that skewer long-accepted assumptions. 250,000 first printing; $250,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The theme of abortion may seem pretty shopworn, but what Pottinger does with it is remarkable, fascinating--and unsettling as, even before introducing the main characters, he throws us into the midst of a graphically described back-alley abortion. First among the protagonists is Rachel Redpath, a transplant specialist who has put a kidney into the large body of pro-life Judge Abner Titus, the leading candidate for chief justice of the Supreme Court. Then there is pro-choice Congressman Jack MacLeod, who is mixed up in the abortion performed on his adolescent sweetheart, who afterwards died and whose body was defiled in the morgue; accomplished feminist lawyer Victoria Winters; and the most disagreeable character, Eli Graves, president of the pro-life Red Rose Society. The plot that ties them together is launched when already autopsied bodies, their livers removed and little dolls deposited in the empty spaces, start turning up at the District of Columbia medical examiner's office and Dr. Elliot Landy wants to know why. He gets help and support from young reporter Molly McCormick, who almost breaks the fantastic story wide open. Pottinger's first novel will have a massive advertising campaign and a quarter-million-copy first printing, but what will really sell it is its flamboyant creativity and the provocative, but not intrusive, messages it relays. William Beatty

Corpses of antiabortionists keep turning up in Washington, D.C., in unlikely spots, but even more unlikely is their condition-all have fresh incisions and a toy doll with a message stuffed inside it. Drawn into this web of murder and mystery is a wide variety of characters whose seemingly random connections turn out to be not so random after all. Each one has a past that sheds light on the current abortion controversy: the congressman whose first love died from the complications of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the brilliant surgeon whose mother succumbed to treatment by a back-alley abortionist, the reporter who grew up in an orphanage, the Supreme Court justice whose parents never wanted him. A first-rate thriller that manages to create a multifaceted picture of the religious, political, legal, and medical issues surrounding the abortion debate. Highly recommended.
Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345384008
• ISBN 13: 9780345384003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 550