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Loading... The Anatomy of Deceptionby Lawrence Goldstone
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  tangledthread | Jul 9, 2009 |  TheNovelWorld | May 10, 2009 | This book was an easy and interesting read. The history of Philadelphia and the medical field were accurate and fascinating. The criminal case was a little odd and the main character's motive for trying to solve the case was never completely revealed or understood (by me). Overall, I enjoyed it and will read more from this author. (  ) northandsouth | Mar 14, 2009 | This is a very interesting, well-researched work of historical fiction about medicine as practiced in 1889, and featuring Dr. William Osler and Dr. William Halsted. A young doctor gets pulled into a mystery involving the body of a young girl who they were planning to autopsy, the workings of Philidelphia society, and its criminal element. Recommended. (  ) Scrabblenut | Feb 17, 2009 | My original review evaporated somehow, so I will try to come up with something. Going in, I didn’t realize how many of the characters are historical figures and that part was pretty interesting. Pioneers of surgery are single-minded individuals who rarely agree with each other in particulars of new techniques, practices and medications. Absolutely fascinating. Horrifying, but fascinating. Really glad I wasn’t alive then and in need of a surgical procedure. Ephie certainly idolized Osler to the point of blindness and this was a dead give away, plot-wise. Someone that naive is sure to have his eyes opened in the most jarring way. Not only is he innocent of men’s duplicitous nature, he’s also pretty ignorant of women. He’s blind to the obvious and puts women in their age old roles of virgin, other or whore. It was pretty funny to watch the scales fall from his eyes so to speak and I was really glad Ms. Doctor rejected him when he tried to pick her up on the rebound. I really wish that Turk had been left alive a bit longer. He was truly the most interesting character presented to us. He schemed and created a whole new identity for himself, but in the end it was not enough to sustain him. The mystery he left behind wasn’t completely solved, but enough was to wrap up the novel. Pacing was slack, but the details and historical accuracy were spot on to this relatively untrained reader. I enjoyed the atmosphere of the period and the undiminishable optimism felt by the protagonists. The plot was pretty transparent and the characters could have been a bit more original, but it was a pretty good effort overall. ( ) Bookmarque | Jul 22, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0385341342, Hardcover)A mesmerizing forensic thriller that thrusts the reader into the operating rooms, drawing rooms, and back alleys of 1889 Philadelphia, as a young doctor grapples with the principles of scientific process to track a daring killerIn the morgue of a Philadelphia hospital, a group of physicians open a coffin and uncover the corpse of a beautiful young woman. What they see takes their breath away. Within days, one of them strongly suspects that he knows the woman’s identity…and the horrifying events that led to her death. But in this richly atmospheric novel–an ingenious blend of history, suspense and early forensic science–the most compelling chapter is yet to come, as young Ephraim Carroll is plunged into a maze of murder, secrets and unimaginable crimes.... Dr. Ephraim Carroll came to Philadelphia to study with a leading professor, the brilliant William Osler, believing that he would gain the power to save countless lives. As America hurtles toward a new century, medicine is changing rapidly, in part due to the legalization of autopsy–a crime only a few years before. But Carroll and his mentor are at odds over what they glimpsed that morning in the hospital’s Dead House. And when a second mysterious death is determined to have been a ruthless murder, Carroll can feel the darkness gathering around him–and he ignites an investigation of his own. Soon he is moving between the realm of elite medicine, Philadelphia high society, and a teeming badlands of criminality and sexual depravity along the city’s fetid waterfront. With a wealthy, seductive woman clouding his vision, the controversial artist Thomas Eakins sowing scandal, and the secrets of the nation’s powerful surgeons unraveling around him, Carroll is forced to confront an agonizing moral choice–between exposing a killer, undoing a wrong, and, quite possibly, protecting the future of medicine itself…. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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The story is narrated by a fictionalized student of Dr. Osler's and is wrapped in a mystery of the murder of a mysterious young woman, whose body shows up for autopsy then mysteriously disappears.
Lawrence Goldstone writes this as fiction to allow him the inventions needed to weave a story. But some of the story is based on papers of Dr. Osler's which were sealed until 50 years after his death.
This was a satisfying read, which reminded me a great deal of Eric Larson's books Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck. (