Harmful Intent

Malpractice lawyer Kerr debuts with an insider's thriller about America's most distrusted professionals: doctors, lawyers and insurers. For three years, Terry Winter scheduled appointments with family doctor Wallace Bondurant to follow up exams of a suspicious breast lump, but he never ordered a biopsy. Now the working-class mother of a 12-year-old daughter is dying of breast cancer, and she wants answers. She turns to attorney Peter Moss, a malpractice burnout with ""Jerry Garcia neckwear,"" still recovering from a devastating loss in court against the same physician. But if Terry's case seems initially foolproof, it soon runs into trouble, as Moss must cope with an ethically challenged defense counsel, a judge openly hostile to malpractice claims, a demonically omniscient insurance adjuster and an elusive client inexplicably on the lam in Mexico. ""You think you know your client and your facts,"" Moss reflects wearily, ""but all you really know is your case--which is to say your own mental constructs."" The more Moss learns about his client, a hard-livin' bartender taken to quoting Janis Joplin and Thoreau (""My man Henry""), the less plausible the premise becomes: how is it possible that this wised-up lady never bothered to get a second opinion? Kerr nearly tips his hand about Dr. Bondurant's secret early on, and strains credulity with the judge's bizarre disposition of the case. But readers will be riveted to his expertly drawn trial sequences--dark and sometimes painfully funny scenes of bloodthirsty lawyering and bloodless doctoring. (Apr.)