Bette Golden Lamb

I believe I'd read book 2 prior to reading this e-box-set. The main characters, Gina Mazzio and Harry Lucke, are nurses.

In book 1, Gina is an oncology nurse, and autogenous bone marrow disappears just before bone marrow transplants are to take place.

In book 2, Gina is taking calls that come in to the nurse advice line.

In book 3, Gina has joined Harry as a traveling nurse and they are both sent to Nevada to a unique facility.

Trouble seems to find Gina no matter where she goes.

WARNING: show more POTENTIAL SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION:
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I admire that Gina (and Harry too) are nurses who want to do right by her (their) patients. She (they) are what nurses should be--looking out for the best interests of the patients they serve. Gina, perhaps, gets too involved with her patients's situations. Harry seems more able to compartmentalize.

I cannot blame Gina for wondering how bone marrow could be lost and for worrying that if it happened once, it could happen again. I can't blame her for wondering why certain protocols aren't followed.

I do wonder what Harry sees in her considering that she seems averse to formal commitment (it seems she's delayed their wedding a few times)--he might be patient, but I have to wonder when that patience will give out. I would also think after a while that her penchant for attracting trouble would affect his own career (even though he travels to various facilities).

Faye confounds me. I don't understand why she'd stay with someone who hurt her so often and so badly. She thinks she loves him and thinks Frank loves her. Frank's only using her. Unlike many abused women, Faye goes off to work most days and Frank's not necessarily around--she could have told any number of people and asked for help--I'm sure the hospital has social workers who could direct her to resources for battered and abused women. Gina would certainly have helped her (and that probably means Harry would have as well). There must be someone in the hospital with a police contact. I will give Faye the fact that she develops a conscience--a bit late, but she does second guess what she's done. It bothered me that no effort seems to have been made to find out if the person needing the transplant has money to pay the blackmail. Some do but others may only have the illusion of wealth (Vinny had donated care because his insurance wouldn't pay for the marrow transplant for example--so it wasn't as if his family had the money to pay for the procedure if the insurance didn't cover it.)

The third book brought up an interesting question: Would you rather live out your natural life but suffer from Alzheimer's or get rid of the Alzheimer's but live a shorter life because other age-related maladies progress more quickly than natural. Tough question--one made worse by the fact that the drug company didn't disclose it to the study participants so they had no clue that this might happen. (I could excuse the early cases because it might not have been a realized side effect at first--not until it started happening with some regularity might someone have suspected that it was a side effect of the Alzheimer's treatment--but then, instead of telling the participants or their families about it and/or disclosing it to new study recruits, they ship the sufferers off to a facility--and not just to manage their conditions until they die, but to allow the facility director to look at living brain tissue (effectively killing the patients to get fresh brain material samples!--definitely goes agains the medical ethics promise). show less

I knew that Bone Dust was going to be good book when I read this line in the prologue which describes a moment with bad guy Russell Thorpe;

"He danced from one end of the room to the other waggling his butt, letting it flop loose so he could feel his cheeks jiggle.

Now that is an image that gives me the heebie-jebbies and I figured that Russell Thorpe was going to be one creepy dude, and I was correct. Russell Thorpe is a phlebotomist and has an interest in blood that is more than an show more occupational passion. Thorpe also happens to be a phlebotomist at the same hospital where Gina Mazzio works. For those of you that are not familiar with the Gina Mazzio series, Gina just seems to have a knack in attracting psychopaths, which once again is proven in Bone Dust.

There is a lot going on for Gina Mazzio in Bone Dust, not only is she having to deal with a psychopath, but she is also having relational problems with the love of her life, Harry Lucke. On top of all of this, she has a crazy ex-husband who wants to kill her and a severe killer outbreak of the flu that is overwhelming Ridgewood Hospital and the city of San Francisco. The big question is “will our sassy nurse from the Bronx survive all this, or will she have a nervous breakdown?”

The Gina Mazzio series gets better with each successive book which makes reading Bone Dust a real pleasure. Even though this is considered a medical thriller, most of the action revolves around situations that are not medically related. The medical focus is primarily on the influenza outbreak and how a big city hospital would deal with it. I would suggest strongly reading the previous novels in the series to get a better feel on what makes the characters tick.

If you are interested in learning more about the Gina Mazzio Series (http://athrillaweek.com/bette-golden-lamb-and-jj-lambs-gina-mazzio-series/) check it out on my blog A-Thrill-A-Week (http://athrillaweek.com/). show less

Medical thriller where a man targets red heads whom he uses, then butchers and sells to educational and research institutions. Fairly well written but some typos and careless mistakes mar the whole.

I read the whole book. I didn't find Gina believable. She was complaining about something being wrong before she stepped inside. How could she know? Also that she went off alone, exploring areas she shouldn't didn't ring true. However the idea was really good and I wouldn't put any skullduggery past pharmaceutical companies.