Heart Seizure: A Novel - Hardcover

Fitzhugh, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380977583 ISBN 13: 9780380977581

Publisher: William Morrow, 2003

Synopsis

Spence Tailor is a lawyer who actually cares about doing the right thing. Opting out of a lucrative career as a corporate shark, Spence chose instead to fight injustice on behalf of the poor and needy.

Spence's dear old mom, Rose Tailor, has advanced dilated cardiomyopathy and the rarest blood type. Waiting patiently, Rose has worked her way to the top of the UNOS transplant list. She's first in line for the next available AB-negative heart.

Meanwhile, the presidential election is three months away and the incumbent, President Webster, plans to run for a second term. All systems are go until his heart craps out while jogging for a photo op. President Webster needs a transplant if he's going to live through November 4th. But wouldn't you know it? He, too, is AB-negative. The odds of finding a heart are terrible.

But lo and behold, a heart becomes available and Rose goes to the hospital to await the harvest.

However, the White House chief of staff, unwilling to wait for nature to take its course, orders the FBI to swoop in, prompt the harvest, and steal Rose's heart in the name of democracy.

When Spence learns someone is trying to steal what rightfully belongs to his mom, he goes into action. Along with his reluctant older brother, Spence steals the heart and goes on the run, inadvertently kidnapping a beautiful cardiac surgery resident along the way.

The president's people -- the FBI and the Secret Service -- give chase hoping to get the heart back before its ischemic time expires.

The president's political opponent is Senator Peggy Check who happens to sit on an obscure Senate Intelligence subcommittee. When she hears terrorists have stolen the heart intended for her political opponent, the senator sends the CIA to make sure the terrorists succeed at their objective -- whatever it might be.

With his ingenious imagination and sharp, biting wit, one of America's brightest comic novelists takes us on a frenzied road trip featuring a broad satiric meditation on politics, democracy, the media, and the current state of the health care system. Ultimately Fitzhugh raises the question: What would you do if it was your mother?

About this title

About the Author:

Bill Fitzhugh is the author of seven novels. He still has all of his original organs and plans to keep it that way until the very end, at which point he is willing to let the doctors divvy them up among anyone (with the exception of politicians) who might need them. However, he makes no promises about the quality of his liver. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and all of her organs.

From Publishers Weekly:

It seems an unlikely setup for a laugh riot, but this satirical novel by Fitzhugh (Pest Control) kicks off with hero Spence Tailor's mother, Rose, on her deathbed in Los Angeles, at the top of the list for a heart transplant. Just when a heart finally comes in, it turns out that the president needs it, too, and the FBI prepares to whisk the organ to Washington, D.C. But Spence has had it with endless delays. The scruffy 39-year-old is an embattled do-gooder lawyer who's just been dumped by his girlfriend; his nerves are already frayed, and he's not about to let anyone get away with the heart-especially not the president. So he and his stodgy banker brother, Boyd, don ski masks, evade FBI agents, distract the surgical resident (by pulling her scrubs down) and steal the heart. Thus begins a zany cross-country chase whose L.A.-Washington axis allows Fitzhugh to skewer both politicians and celebrities, not to mention TV newshounds, HMOs, soccer moms and other features of contemporary life. He builds a complex plot with dozens of believable-if broadly drawn-characters, most of whom share the same two traits: deep political or family commitments contradicted by self-serving impulses. The humor occasionally devolves into slapstick and corny jokes (a drug designed to treat erectile dysfunction is called Mycoxaflopin), yet much of the novel is genuinely funny (especially a memorable description of political jockeying at a suburban parents' association meeting). While Fitzhugh's perspective is definitely left of center, his satiric eye spares no one.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0380977583
• ISBN 13: 9780380977581
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448