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MY REVIEW:
Genre | Tropes: Mystery, Thriller, Investigative, Medical Thriller
Rating: 4 out of 5 ⭐
A medical thriller that really hones in on the personal elements of the students, residents and other staff at the hospital. Sherman “Sandy” Wainwright is found dead in his apartment of an apparent suicide. But as detective Barney Kazinski begins to unravel Sandy’s personal life, it appears he may have had a lot of enemies which propels this into a murder investigation.
The detective, Barney, was actually a fun perspective to read from. He’s a middle aged man and questioning his skills not only as a detective, but that failure of his personal life as well. His wife and daughter left him a long time ago and he just kind of bumbles through life each day. But this investigation brings a lot of things into perspective for him that provides deep reflection that Barney hasn’t given himself the opportunity to have.
Alongside the detective, there’s a huge cast of characters and each one was interesting in and of themselves. I enjoyed the mystery elements that unraveled throughout the story providing a great foundation for where it ends. I honestly wasn’t surprised at the end, but I was surprised at how everything ended up coming together. It wasn’t that easy to figure out until I was about 3/4 of the way through it.
Thrillers and mysteries are one of my favorite genres that I just don’t read much of anymore and I’ve always enjoyed true crime as well. Which meant that this medical thriller grabbed my attention and provided an entertaining, albeit uncomfortable at times, read for me. The main character is a bit of a playboy, but that’s known pretty quickly from the beginning, and continues to be a main focal point throughout the story.
You’ll never guess where the clues will lead Barney, but rest assured he won’t give up until he’s figured it all out!
GET IT HERE:
“Death in a White Coat” is a medical mystery, the first novel by Larry Kirshbaum, a 55-year veteran of the publishing industry. Set within the walls of a prestigious fictional Manhattan hospital, the novel revolves around the mysterious death of a talented and wealthy young medical student who seems to have a brilliant life and career ahead of him.
Drawing on his background of working with some of the great thriller and mystery writers over his long career, Kirshbaum explores what happens when a cocky and lustful male student in his first clinical year manages to alienate some of his intimate female admirers in the hospital world. Their quest for revenge becomes the job of a senior NYPD detective to sort out whether the student’s death was a murder or suicide or perhaps a combination of his bad timing and restless ego that coincided with his female associates (and a male or two) looking for love in all the wrong places.
The major characters in the book include the cocky student Sherman “Sandy” Wainwright, his initial instructor, the Resident Doctor Ashley Dillon, who tends to attract unavailable men, and Barney Kazinski, the police veteran who finds himself caught in a mid-life search for his true comfort zone in law enforcement.
From his earliest journalistic experiences as an editor of his high school and college newspapers, the author Larry Kirshbaum has always been fascinated with the written word in print or digital formats. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1966 he worked as a journalist for Newsweek Magazine and co-authored a non-fiction study of student protest with a Michigan Daily classmate Roger Rapoport entitled “Is the Library Burning?” It was published by Random House in 1970. Most of Kirshbaum’s publishing career was spent at the Warner Book Group where he became publisher in 1985 and CEO for ten years starting in 1997. He also worked as a literary agent with the Scott Waxman Agency and spent three years from 2011-14 managing the New York City office of Amazon Book Publishing. He now lives in Manhattan with his wife of 57 years, Barbara, whom he met in his freshman year at Michigan. Their children and grandchildren live close by with a dog and a cat in their respective families.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Larry Kirshbaum
From his earliest journalistic experience as an editor of his high school and college newspapers, Kirshbaum has always been fascinated by the written word in printed or digital formats. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1966, he started as a correspondent for Newsweek Magazine in Detroit covering the riots in 1967 and 1968. He then wrote a book about student protest with a co-writer Roger Rapoport, published by Random House and entitled “Is the Library Burning?”
Most of his publishing career was spent at the Warner Book Group where he started in 1974 and rose to becoming publisher in 1985 and CEO from 1997 to 2005. He has been running the LJK Literary Agency since that time with a three-year interlude as head of the New York City office of Amazon publishing. He lives in Manhattan with his wife Barbara of 57 years whom he met as a freshman at Michigan. They are very fortunate to have their children and grandchildren living nearby with a dog and cat in their kids’ respective families.
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