First Cut

In her first book since 1988's Blood Run, Robinson spins a medical thriller that's long on medical accuracy but a little short on thrills. Narrator Evelyn Sutcliffe, a second-year resident working in the emergency room at New York City's University Hospital, is mugged by a jogger fitting the description of the Babydoll Killer, a serial rapist who leaves a naked rubber doll with each of his victims. Later, suspecting that her assailant was fleeing the scene of the rape and murder of a young girl employed at a nearby bakery frequented by the hospital staff, Ev and her bright, attractive protegee, senior med student Lisa Chiu, look for clues to the identity of a shadowy man who had been asking the victim for dates. They have little success, however. When Lisa is found brutally murdered in her apartment in the staff physicians' quarters clutching a baby doll, virtually everybody becomes a suspect. Burdened somewhat by a hackneyed plot and one-dimensional characters, the suspense is further sabotaged by Ev's superfluous adventure as a film consultant and by Robinson's ambition to bring too much authenticity to her portrayal of a hospital. Still, the narrative rolls quickly through the bedlam of the modern teaching hospital, touching on a cavalcade of social, medical and romantic issues. There's alcoholism and Freudian sexual hang-ups, the politics of abortion, medical bumbling, insurance fraud and sexual tension. It all comes slick and fast, the perfect medicine for readers who can't wait for the next episode of ER. 125,000 first printing; $200,000 ad/promo; foreign rights sold in the U.K., France, Sweden and the Netherlands. (Apr.)