Life Support - Tess Gerritsen

I read this book a while ago, having never heard of Tess Gerritsen, and not even really being a fan of the genre she writes in. I suppose you could file it under medical crime thriller, if you wanted, and while crime and thriller regularly appear in my list of favourite books, I have never ventured into the medical side of reading.

Gerritsen is a doctor herself, and so I was expecting a book full of jargon and whole sections that would go completely above my head. However, what she presents us with is very much a medical crime thriller for the layman, with no overwhelmingly long and descriptive medical passages. Life Support essentially deals with an illegal experiment into finding the Fountain of Youth, an elixir that can reduce the ageing process. It takes its main character, Dr Toby Harper, and shows her to be a headstrong woman who looks out for her patients.

Working a night shift in the ER at Springer hospital, she becomes intrigued when a confused and naked elderly man is brought in by the police. The man clearly has no idea what is going on, and she finds out he lives in a swanky retirement area. However, this is not the end of it, and as similar events occur to others, Toby finds herself embroiled in a curious experiment that has resulted in a strain of Creutfeld-Jakb Disease (CJD) in various subjects.

The remainder of the book become an incredibly tense thriller, and one with a clever and twisting plot. The fact that all this evidence is uncovered very early on led me to believe that there wasn't really anything else to uncover. I suppose I took on a rather negative and unenthusiastic approach to reading the rest of it, but after only a few chapters I found myself once more digging in and not wanting to put the book down.

Gerritsen's writing style is rather clever. She manages to include the important medical detail without overwhelming and alienating a vast majority of the ignorant public. Her handling of CJD, which we know more commonly as Mad Cow's Disease, is quite typical of an American viewpoint, which, in comparison to here in the UK, hasn't had the exposure we experienced. It is quite a patriotic and defensive way of dealing with it, and at times I was a bit annoyed at how it seemed to make fun of the Brits' cows all being mad and so are the people, etc etc. It bugged me a little, particularly as it was a medical professional writing the book, but ultimately it's fiction, and tries to appeal to a public who maybe think along the same lines.....

What Gerritsen also does very well is include a separate, yet relevant, subplot, involving the teenage prostitute Molly Picker. Molly is pregnant, and wrestles with her hormones. Gerritsen portrays this character exceptionally well, and the tension is unbearable as she is passed from person to person, and meeting to meeting, with reassurances seeming hollow and fake. You wonder what is going to happen to her and her baby, if there are deeper things going on here, and constantly the method in which she became pregnant is called into question. You really wonder, what with the whol experimental side of the main plot, what exactly is going on, and it is tense and extremely well integrated into the book.

The merging of the two plots with the expreimental and scientifically medical side of things is probably the main appeal of the book, and how two cleverly interwoven storylines can grip a reader so thoroughly. Despite my misgivings in the middle part of the book, it's a thoroughly enjoyable thriller to read. The characterisation is very good, and while the book does overly focus on Toby, it isn't so much of a bad thing as Gerritsen has created an extremely accessible character here, one that is is pleasing to read about, and one that is quite universal in terms of being understood as a male reader.

As a man, I often find it hard to completely associate with books where a female is the lead character. This is not chauvinism or sexism, it's merely that I cannot associate with being a woman!!! However, the character of Toby and her thoughts and actions, are all instinctive and laudable, and it is the character's professionalism and human instincts that are appealing, and not her female actions and emotions and feelings for various men she may come across. In this respect, I found that I actually could relax and enjoy the story from the main character's point of view, even though it was a woman. I often have trouble with other authors' female leads, such as Kathy Reichs' Tempe Brennan or Faye Kellerman's Cindy Decker. I find it easier where male authors are concerned, such as James Patterson's Lindsay Boxer, or even when Sebastian Faulks writes from a female perspective.

But Gerritsen manages to appeal very well to me as a male reader, and I applaud her for this. Overall, Life Support is a very well written book, and one that is hard to put down. At times, the subject matter can get a bit confusing, and there are some unpleasant moments. It has occasions of violence, but none moreso than the usual thrillers you expect to see on the shelves. I recommend reading this, and while it wasn't my favourite thriller, and there are other authors out there that I prefer reading, she is definitely one I keep in mind, and always show an interest if I come across one of hers when looking for a new book.