The Anatomy of Deception - Hardcover

Goldstone, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385665091 ISBN 13: 9780385665094

Publisher: Doubleday Canada, 2008

Synopsis

In the tradition of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist and Matthew Pearl’s The Dante Club, this mesmerizing forensic thriller thrusts the reader into the operating rooms, drawing rooms, and back alleys of 1889 Philadelphia, as a doctor grapples with the principles of scientific process to track a daring killer.

In the morgue of a Philadelphia hospital, physicians uncover the corpse of a beautiful young woman. What they see takes their breath away. Within days, one doctor, Ephraim Carroll, strongly suspects that he knows the woman’s identity. . .and the horrifying events that led to her death. But in this richly atmospheric debut novel – an ingenious blend of history, suspense, and early forensic science – the most compelling chapter is yet to come, as the young doctor is plunged into a maze of murder, secrets, and unimaginable crimes.

Peopled with vibrant real-life characters such as Canadian William Osler, hailed as the Father of Modern Medicine; famed surgeon William Stewart Halsted, who performed the first emergency blood transfusion and invented surgical gloves; and the controversial painter Thomas Eakins, The Anatomy of Deception brings to life a little-known and exciting turning-point in American medical history, when ignorant butchery gave way to intelligent surgery–and a young doctor is forced to confront an agonizing moral choice between exposing a killer, undoing a wrong, and, quite possibly, protecting the future of medicine itself.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Philadelphia, 1889

In the morgue of the city hospital, physicians uncover the corpse of a beautiful young woman. What they see takes their breath away.

Within days, one of the doctors, Ephraim Carroll, strongly suspects that he knows the woman’s identity. His investigations take him from the bloody and brutal medical world in which he practises and into the drawing rooms of Philadelphia’s high society where he soon learns that nothing – and no one – is what it seems.

Plunged into a maze of deception and deadly secrets, Carroll is forced to choose between exposing a killer, undoing a terrible wrong, and, quite possibly, protecting the future of medicine itself.

Set in a world in which aspirin had not been invented, pregnancy could result in agonizing death, and doctors killed as many patients as they cured, The Anatomy of Deception is an intriguing and richly atmospheric blend of history, early forensic science and knife-edge suspense.

About the Author

Lawrence Goldstone, with his wife, Nancy, is the author of two critically acclaimed narrative histories of medicine and anatomy. He has written for the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Miami Herald. He lives in Westport, Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday Canada
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0385665091
• ISBN 13: 9780385665094
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352