Psv Harvest

When Robin Cook wrote Coma in 1977, the idea of hospital patients being incubated for their vital organs sounded like science fiction. Twenty years later, this gripping thriller about a thriving international black market in human hearts, livers and kidneys could come from tomorrow's "Nightline." Author Gerritsen was an internist before she switched her energies to writing, and her experience shows in every scene. When young surgical resident Dr. Abby DiMatteo assists at her first "harvest" (the removal of living organs from a patient declared legally brain dead) at Boston's posh Bayside Hospital, "she felt vaguely nauseated by the whine of the blade, the smell of bone dust," neither of which seem to bother the veterans. It's obviously a personal memory being mined for good fictional purposes. (Gerritsen wrote paperback romance novels before Harvest: Check out her Keeper of the Bride and Thief of Hearts.)

In a novel of harrowing suspense and brilliantly crafted plot twists, author Tess Gerritsen draws on her years of experience as a doctor to deliver an explosive thriller that makes her an indisputable star. HARVEST vividly portrays a young woman doctor challenging a world where medical miracles and greed fuel a lethal conspiracy-and the bright lights of the O.R. conceal the ultimate corruption of genius. Unerringly authentic, with scalpel-sharp characterizations that rival Patricia Cornwell's HARVEST is an astounding debut....

HARVEST
TESS GERRITSEN

For Dr. Abby DiMatteo, the road to Boston's Bayside Hospital began with a tragic accident-and the desperate, awful weeks that followed as she watched her little brother, Pete, lose his battle to live. Despite her small-town roots and lack of money, Abby pushed through college and medical school, each achievement strengthening her ambition to reach higher. Now, immersed in the grinding fatigue of her second year as a surgical resident, she's elated when the hospital's elite cardiac transplant team taps her as a potential recruit.

But Abby soon makes an anguished, crucial decision that jeopardizes her entire career. A car crash victim's healthy heart is ready to be harvested; it is immediately cross-matched to a wealthy private patient, forty-six-year-old Nina Voss. Abby and chief resident Vivian Chao hatch a bold plan to make sure that the transplant goes instead to a dying seventeen-year-old boy who is also a perfect match.

The repercussions are powerful and swift; Dr. Chao resigns, bowing under the combined fury of the hospital's top staff and Nina Voss's outraged husband. Abby is shaken but unrepentant-until she meets the frail, tormented Nina. Then a new heart for Nina Voss suddenly appears, her transplant is completed, and Abby makes a terrible discovery. The donor records have been falsified-Nina's heart has not come through the proper channels.

Defying Bayside Hospital's demands for silence, Abby, with Vivian Chao's help, plunges into an investigation that reveals an intricate, and murderous, chain of deceptions. Every move Abby makes spawns a vicious backlash... and, in a ship anchored in the stagnant waters of Boston Harbor, a final, grisly discovery lies waiting....

As compelling as the best Michael Crichton of Michael Palmer, more provocative than tomorrow's headlines, HARVEST is a mesmerizing read-and Tess Gerritsen proves herself to be a new master of first-class suspense fiction.