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When one doctor is accused of murder, it takes another to set him free In the tightly knit world of Boston medicine, the Randall family reigns supreme. When heart surgeon J. D. Randall's teenage daughter dies during a botched abortion, the medical community threatens to explode. Was it malpractice? A violation of the Hippocratic Oath? Or was Karen Randall murdered in cold blood? The natural suspect is Arthur Lee, a brilliant surgeon and known abortionist, who has been carrying out the illegal procedure with the help of pathologist John Berry. After Karen dies, Lee is thrown in jail on a murder charge, and only Berry can prove his friend wasn't the one who wielded the scalpel. Behind this gruesome death, Berry will uncover a secret that would shock even the most hardened pathologist. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Michael Crichton including rare images from the author's estate.… (more)
User reviews
An excellent read for anyone who like science fiction and has dabbled in science sometime at school.
A Case of Need is a stimulating story that kept my interest and I found that it was hard to put down. It educated s on some of the arguments for both sides of the abortion issue while maintaining a very good story line and character set. The plot revolves
As you read on you that the abortion killed the girl, so the person who performed the abortion is guilty of murder. For medical thriller fans I would highly recommend this book.
The
While no one would argue that this is an accomplished work of literature, it still bears a strong resemblance to Crichton's later novels, particularly in terms of the scientific detail, the fast pace, and the incorporation of social issues to drive the plot, making this a very fast and entertaining read. A small thing I noticed: in this story, Crichton doesn't use many dialogue identifiers (eg. "he said," "she said"). This helped move the story along at a breakneck speed, but it also became a little difficult to follow the thread of the conversation, particularly if you read it as quickly as I did. Characters are hard to differentiate between, but then again, character development was never meant to be one of the story's strong points.
Another note: While Crichton uses a lot of scientific terminology, don't let that deter you from trying this book. Crichton excels at making high-tech concepts accessible for the lay person.
Recommended for: readers who like breakneck thrillers, medical thrillers, stories that incorporate major social issues into the plot.
Readalikes: Anything else that Michael Crichton has written. Andromeda Strain was his first novel written under his actual name and also features much scientific & medical jargon as well as breakneck pacing, although The Andromeda Strain is usually classified more as science fiction as opposed to straight-up thriller. State of Fear is another good choice if you enjoyed the presence of social & political issues within the main story - in this case, global warming is the topic du jour.
Robin Cook, a certified master of the medical thriller. Cook's prose is less scientific and straightforward than Crichton's, but he still offers an exciting glimpse into the dramatic and thrilling world of the medical community.
Mark Alpert combines action with scientific theory & explanation, creating high-octane and fascinating thrillers that are still accessible for the average reader.
The following year, in summer, I found a room in an off-campus house. One of my flatmates had taken some time off from school the previous year. It turned out she had had a legal abortion at one of the best hospitals in Boston. You could get one if a panel of three doctors agreed that it was necessary for your health, and mental health counted. Unfortunately something had gone wrong, and she would now be unable to bear children. Since the abortion took place in a hospital, she didn't die.
For these reasons and a few other stories from women I've known, I was interested immediately in A CASE OF NEED when, looking it up in the library catalog, I saw the tracing "Abortion - Fiction." (I was going to read it anyway as part of my Edgar-winners project.) I brought the book home and started reading it right away. I'm going to give it a rating four stars, because the story certainly pulled me along. But for my tired old eyes, I would have finished it in one sitting.
Why not five stars -- which was evidently the consensus of the Edgar committee? One reason is that there were some definite plot holes. I can't really describe them for fear of spoilers, but since the story centers around doctors and others performing illegal abortions, I will point out that the three-doctor panel option existed at the time of the book, and is not mentioned. There are several more, which I'm sure any of you who read the book will spot.
Another reason is Hudson/Crichton's annoying practice of using medical jargon and abbreviations and then FOOTNOTING them! Yes, footnotes in a mystery thriller! I realize that this book preceded /Chicago Hope/ and /ER/, which made us all so conversant with hospital talk, but after all, it did follow /Dr. Kildare /and /Ben Casey/! I haven't read any of Crichton's other books, so I trust this was just a matter of youthful inexperience. I've read many books set in milieus unfamiliar to me, and nearly all the authors have been able to explain unfamiliar terms without resorting to footnotes. Talk about taking the reader out of the story!
The third reason I have for withholding the fifth star is the evident misogyny of the narrator/protagonist and, I fear, of the author himself. Maybe it's just me, but the way the protagonist interacts with his wife, the nurses, and the other women who come into the story suggested to me that he really didn't believe women were people. Perhaps I'm being unduly harsh and perhaps my view is skewed by having read that Crichton has been married 5 times. I will accept correction if someone believes differently. The character of the narrator is problematic in some other ways as well, again, I can't really explain that without spoilers.
To be fair, I'm still impressed that Crichton wrote a book this good while studying at Harvard Medical School. In spite of some very dated attitudes, it's still worth reading.
The plot left a lot to be desired - especially in the last third of the book where it became very far fetched. Another thing that bothered me was his blatant sexism. For example, there were over a dozen doctors mentioned in the book and not one was a woman. Most of the women in the novel were referred to as "girls". Although the woman's movement was well under way by the time this novel was written, there were plenty of male chauvinists around and Crichton was clearly one of them.
While this was not a great novel, I did enjoy it and would recommend it for Michael Crichton fans.
Essentially, it’s the story of a doctor who is falsely accused of performing an illegal abortion that results in the death of a young woman from a prominent family. The protagonist, a friend of the accused, sets out to determine what really happened, and uncovers a coiling nest of prominent people with dirty secrets. It’s not a bad story, but it’s certainly the first novel I’ve ever read with footnotes. Somebody apparently thought it would be a good idea to footnote virtually every medical term used in the text – a disruptive and largely unnecessary step.
It’s a compelling read until the last quarter of the book, when the cast of characters reaches critical mass and the reader really has trouble remembering who was what and how they all tie together.
Unfortunately, Dr. Lee makes a good scapegoat. He's half Chinese, so racism is a factor, and it won't take much work to uncover that he does, in fact, perform abortions (and people like John and other doctors helped him hide it). It won't matter to anyone but John and Dr. Lee's wife that he didn't perform this particular abortion. John figures that if he doesn't try to find out the truth, no one will.
This is one of the works on Rep. Matt Krause's list of books he wanted banned from Texas schools. It caught my eye for several reasons - the author, how old it was, and overall how odd it was to see it on the list. From what I can tell, it isn't YA fiction and was never marketed as such, although that's not to say it wouldn't appeal to teens. Still, if a school library has this in their collection, I'm guessing it's a pretty good indicator that they're sorely in need of funds for new books.
Anyway, it's pretty obvious that it ended up on the list because of its frank discussion of abortion. It even includes an appendix that lays out the arguments for and against abortion, at the time this book was written, and it's clear that Crichton considered the former to be stronger and more convincing than the latter. However, it's also clear that Rep. Krause didn't read all the books he included in his list, because one could argue that the text itself had anti-abortion aspects in the way Karen was written and John's surprising inability to explain the word "abortionist" to Dr. Lee's young son in a way that didn't make it sound like a terrible thing.
The story had a very noir feel to it. It was written in first person, from John's POV, and I often found myself thinking that he read like an old school detective who happened to know a lot of medical jargon. There was even a scene in which he followed a guy around for a bit, like some kind of private investigator. And a surprising number of people talked to him and told him everything he needed to know, even though literally no one was required to tell him anything.
The mystery was extremely convoluted and confusing - I kept forgetting who everyone was, since the primary identifying characteristic of most of them was that they were male doctors. While it kept my attention, it didn't come together in a satisfying way in the end. I was left with a bunch of questions about details that were never fully addressed. I'm still not sure if I missed something, or if Crichton really did just opt not to explain the various odd details that John kept coming across and puzzling over. I finished this feeling like I'd read maybe 95% of a book, as though the chapter that was supposed to tie everything together was left out.
This wasn't necessarily a horrible reading experience, but it did come across as extremely dated. The casual racism grated on my nerves, and it was amazing how few women had speaking roles considering this was a book dealing with an issue that primarily affects women. I did appreciate that it dealt with abortion almost entirely from a medical perspective, although the revelations about Karen possibly undermined that somewhat. Characters' opinions on abortion weren't always clear, but one thing the book never wavered on was the safety factor: abortions performed by trained doctors in medical facilities are safer than both amateur abortions and giving birth.
In case this wasn't already clear: This book is absolutely not for anyone who has phobias about going to the doctor, and not just because of the graphic descriptions of what happened to Karen. Pretty much all of the doctors were horrible in some way - arrogant, misogynistic, sleazy, etc. It's one thing to know intellectually that doctors are imperfect and human like everyone else, and another thing entirely to have all the ugliness on-page.
Extras:
Various footnotes throughout explaining some of the medical jargon. Also, six appendices: "Delicatessen Pathologists" (explains why some pathologists describe diseased organs as though they were food), "Cops and Doctors" (why doctors don't trust police), "Battlefields and Barberpoles" (the link between surgery and war), "Abbreviations," "Whites" (medical uniforms), "Arguments on Abortion," and "Medical Morals."
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)