Knife Music
David Carnoy, Overlook, $24.95 (384p) ISBN 978-1-59020-325-5
Carnoy's debut, a thriller set in California's Silicon Valley, fails to deliver on the promise of its intriguing conceit—the degree of a doctor's legal responsibility in a patient's suicide. Shortly before hanging herself from a showerhead, 16-year-old Kristen Kroiter wrote in her diary about having sex with 43-year-old Ted Cogan, a senior trauma surgeon reputed to be a playboy. The doctor treated her in the hospital after she drove her father's Volkswagen Jetta over a curb and struck a telephone pole a few months earlier. Arrested for contributing to Kristen's death, then suspended from his job, Cogan begins playing gumshoe to clear his name. He eventually tracks many of the case's weak underpinnings to a fraternity at nearby Stanford University. Despite a varied cast of characters and some snappy plotting, the story flattens in the middle and struggles to resuscitate itself. Readers who stick around for answers to nagging questions may find it wasn't worth the wait. (July)
Details
Reviewed on: 05/10/2010
Genre: Fiction
Analog Audio Cassette - 978-1-4417-6243-6
Compact Disc - 978-1-4417-6244-3
Compact Disc - 978-1-4417-6245-0
Hardcover - 463 pages - 978-1-60285-817-6
MP3 CD - 978-1-4417-6246-7
Open Ebook - 325 pages - 978-1-59020-582-2
Open Ebook - 1 pages - 978-1-4417-6248-1
Other - 352 pages - 978-1-59020-581-5
Paperback - 352 pages - 978-1-4683-0702-3
Pre-Recorded Audio Player - 978-1-4417-6249-8
