To the Bone

Carroll Monks #3

by Neil McMahon

Late one hot summer night, a beautiful young actress named Eden Hale - only hours removed from breast-augmentation surgery, and writhing in pain - stumbles to the telephone and dials 911. Within minutes, an ambulance rushes her to San Francisco's Mercy Hospital. But by the time she arrives, she is dying, fast, of a mysterious, unrecognizable condition.
Dr. Carroll Monks, the ER physician on duty, races to sort through her baffling symptoms in the few minutes he has left to save her. Monks has a sudden insight and, against the advice of his peers, risks a radical treatment, which will prove to be either a brilliant manuever or a potentially deadly mistake. It fails. Eden Hale, vibrantly healthy and barely twenty-five years old, is dead.
The fallout is immediate and intense. The plastic surgeon who operated on Eden - Dr. D. Welles D'Anton, whose reputation as a surgical guarantor of perfection and agelessness has conferred on him a guru-like status - blames Monks for her death. Criticism from Monks's hospital colleagues quickly follows and the threat of a lawsuit is not far behind. Monks's career is in jeopardy, but his own guilt and uncertainty are what haunt him worst of all.
Convinced there's a hidden cause to Eden's death, Monks starts to delve into her past. Despite roadblocks that spring up in his path, he soon learns that the former prom queen was not the all-American girl she seemed to she was caught up in the world of pornography, and was even, possibly, having an ilicit affair with D'Anton. Then Monks uncovers a secret that is far more other young women in D'Anton's care have wound up missing, dead, or horribly disfigured.
In his search for the truth, Monks is drawn into a culture of unimaginable wealth and vanity - only to discover that he is being used as a pawn in a decadent game of glamour and cruelty, one that places him in the crosshairs of a deadly psychopath.

Genres: Mystery, Medical, Thriller

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

aka Daniel Rhodes.



Neil McMahon grew up in Chicago, holds a degree in psychology from Stanford, and has lived in Montana since 1971. His wife, Kim, coordinates the annual Montana Festival Of The Book. Along with writing, he spent many years working as a carpenter. He has published ten thrillers in addition to co-authoring, with James Patterson, the #1 New York Times bestseller, TOYS. His first three novels, horror thrillers NEXT, AFTER LUCIFER; ADVERSARY; and CAST ANGELS DOWN TO HELL, are newly released for the first time since their original publication 1987-90.

Reviews

[David Linzee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Third in the series about San Francisco ER doctor Carroll Monks, this one has him doing more sleuthing than healing. He's tough, sexy, and hard-drinking in the Travis McGee tradition. He goes up against a millionaire plastic surgeon, which moves him to some rather predictable moralizing about the American obsession with youth and beauty. The plot is somewhat predictable too, a fault the author must have sensed, because he tacks on a surprise ending that leaves a reader shrugging rather than gasping.

[Plam · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Rochelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️’s

[Marcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good thriller. I had mixed feelings about the protagonist but like most of us he had a mix of good and some flaws. It's not a book I'll remember a year or two from now so I gave it a 3.

[Donna Adkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keeps you guessing u til the end. Good beach read...

[Henry Hakamaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I love twists in the end to throw you off, this one twisted to far. It incorporated a very minor part of the book, almost irrelevant, in order to change things up. If he really wanted to end it the way he did, he needed to spend more time developing that part of the story to make it more clear at the end. Other than that, it was an entertaining book.

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

My only complaint is that I can't see the police allowing an ER doc to aid in an investigation to the degree Dr. Monk did at the end... and that I don't know that there was enough of a reason for getting a warrant.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite scary for a medical thriller, though I was able to guess who the killer was early and then he had me second guessing myself. Fast paced with enough booze to get you drunk just reading.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

again, hospital mystery murder, I didn't even see this one coming!

[Melet]

Dr. Carroll Monks works in ER - lady brought in dying of mystery ailment. Plastic surgery clinic w/secrets.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read three of McMahon's other books. Two of these were set in Montana, the other in San Francisco as this one is. The others, especially the Montana books were better. Much better.

[Peiru Zheng · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different writing style from Patterson, nonetheless still a decent read!

[Michelegg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an okay book about an ER doc whose patient dies and he does some investigating into the cause of her death. So-so.

[Bebe Four · Rating 2 out of 5]

2+

[Betty · Rating 3 out of 5]

should be a 3.5 stars :)