Conditional

by George Beddingfield

Greed can be a lethal weapon in the hands of persons with power. CONDITIONAL, is a medical thriller which follows Dr. Jonathan Harding, a hospital accreditation surveyor, and his two colleagues, a nurse and a hospital administrator, during their 2005 assignment to survey a group of hospitals in the Dallas area. The three run afoul of Larry Sullivan, a sociopathic hospital CEO, when the outcome of his hospital’s survey is conditional accreditation. Obsessed by greed, Sullivan also manages a profitable relationship with the drug cartels of northern Mexico. He fears the less than perfect outcome of his hospital’s just-completed survey will threaten his expected year-end bonus—money he urgently needs to pay off a huge debt to the Mexican drug lords. A lifelong bully, Sullivan irrationally blames the survey team for his hospital’s poor performance. He rallies his clandestine associates to strong-arm the survey team to change their report to his advantage. His malicious actions cause stalking, assault, kidnapping, and painful injury to the medical team while carrying out their hospital inspections. Peter Larsen, a young, handsome, and gum-chewing FBI agent, collaborates closely with the medical team to rescue the kidnapped surveyor and to unravel Sullivan’s link to the Mexican cartels.

266 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 25, 2012

Reviews

[Lynette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This thriller was fairly amateurish and yet it was interesting enough to finish. The author has gone out of his way to give one of the main characters a quirk, which he beats to the ground. (The guy chews gum.) The Spanish is deplorable; Beddingfield insists on spelling Enrique with an accent on the final e, which is incorrect, among other errors. The plot moves forward quickly, however, and the characters are likeable.