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A Paper Mask
A nailbiting thriller in the tradition of "Ripley's Game". Hospital orderly Matthew Harris is every bit as smart as the junior doctors he works alongside. He's also trapped, bored, ambitious and ruthless. When a medical intern dies, Matthew assumes his identity and takes the dead man's next job, on the far side of the country, as a junior Emergency Room physician. As the deception starts to unravel, the young nurse who falls for him is the one person standing between the newly-minted bogus doctor and the exposure of his lethal charade.
"Newcomer of the year. .... with complete believability the plot keeps twisting right up to the final words" Time magazine
"First Rate... Fast paced and entertaining... Great technical panache" - Newsweek
"John Collee has a masterful hand at narrative and a fast sure pro style... His work is clear, artfully unaddorned, and paced like a race hose" - News Day
A nailbiting thriller in the tradition of "Ripley's Game". Hospital orderly Matthew Harris is every bit as smart as the junior doctors he works alongside. He's also trapped, bored, ambitious and ruthless. When a medical intern dies, Matthew assumes his identity and takes the dead man's next job, on the far side of the country, as a junior Emergency Room physician. As the deception starts to unravel, the young nurse who falls for him is the one person standing between the newly-minted bogus doctor and the exposure of his lethal charade.
"Newcomer of the year. .... with complete believability the plot keeps twisting right up to the final words" Time magazine
"First Rate... Fast paced and entertaining... Great technical panache" - Newsweek
"John Collee has a masterful hand at narrative and a fast sure pro style... His work is clear, artfully unaddorned, and paced like a race hose" - News Day
232 pages, Hardcover
First published September 29, 1988
17 people are currently reading
406 people want to read
About the author
John Collee
8 books10 followersScreenwriter of Master and Commander, Happy Feet etc. Former doctor. Journalist and novelist
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
June 20, 2020
Awesome
I love this book. I read it about 20 years ago and I haven’t ever forgotten it. I enjoyed reading it again
I love this book. I read it about 20 years ago and I haven’t ever forgotten it. I enjoyed reading it again
April 21, 2019
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I was familiar with ‘A Paper Mask’ through the excellent 1990 film adaptation of it with Paul McGann and Amanda Donohue (and no ‘A’, it’s just called ‘Paper Mask’). When someone recently asked me to recommend a medical thriller I remembered that the film was based on a book and suggested this. Once that thought was in my head, of course, I had to buy myself a copy too. Incidentally, author John Collee also wrote the screenplay for the film. In fact it’s as a screenwriter that he is more widely known, having also penned ‘Master and Commander’ and ‘Happy Feet’.
The story of ‘A Paper Mask’ is straightforward and effective. A hospital orderly, Matthew, who has picked up a passable knowledge of medicine through his job, masquerades as a doctor. It’s a great concept, so great in fact that it was comprehensively ripped off in 2017 for a BBC show called ‘Trust Me’. The plot is as you’d imagine it, as the deception continues the risk of discovery increases and Matthew has to take more and more extreme measures to protect his secret.
Whilst the book is short and the story simple, it leaves an impression. In John Collee’s capable hands, the tale as it unravels feels grimly inevitable rather than predictable. It’s written in the first person and Matthew’s narration is compelling and often chilling. Over time it becomes obvious that he is deceiving himself as much as anyone else. There is a disturbing sociopathy to his relation of the events, a lack of empathy that is as convincing as it is troubling.
It’s Matthew that makes the book as effective as it is. If he were a sympathetic hero (as the protagonist in ‘Trust Me’ became) the book wouldn’t be nearly as memorable as it is. Instead his constant self-justification in the face of the unintended consequences of his actions is thought provoking. The book makes us think about our own choices and how they shape us and change our lives and those of the people around us.
So despite the fact that I hadn’t read the book when I recommended it, I’m glad that I did. It’s tense and thoughtful; easy to read but surprisingly deep. In other words, everything a crime novel should be.
I was familiar with ‘A Paper Mask’ through the excellent 1990 film adaptation of it with Paul McGann and Amanda Donohue (and no ‘A’, it’s just called ‘Paper Mask’). When someone recently asked me to recommend a medical thriller I remembered that the film was based on a book and suggested this. Once that thought was in my head, of course, I had to buy myself a copy too. Incidentally, author John Collee also wrote the screenplay for the film. In fact it’s as a screenwriter that he is more widely known, having also penned ‘Master and Commander’ and ‘Happy Feet’.
The story of ‘A Paper Mask’ is straightforward and effective. A hospital orderly, Matthew, who has picked up a passable knowledge of medicine through his job, masquerades as a doctor. It’s a great concept, so great in fact that it was comprehensively ripped off in 2017 for a BBC show called ‘Trust Me’. The plot is as you’d imagine it, as the deception continues the risk of discovery increases and Matthew has to take more and more extreme measures to protect his secret.
Whilst the book is short and the story simple, it leaves an impression. In John Collee’s capable hands, the tale as it unravels feels grimly inevitable rather than predictable. It’s written in the first person and Matthew’s narration is compelling and often chilling. Over time it becomes obvious that he is deceiving himself as much as anyone else. There is a disturbing sociopathy to his relation of the events, a lack of empathy that is as convincing as it is troubling.
It’s Matthew that makes the book as effective as it is. If he were a sympathetic hero (as the protagonist in ‘Trust Me’ became) the book wouldn’t be nearly as memorable as it is. Instead his constant self-justification in the face of the unintended consequences of his actions is thought provoking. The book makes us think about our own choices and how they shape us and change our lives and those of the people around us.
So despite the fact that I hadn’t read the book when I recommended it, I’m glad that I did. It’s tense and thoughtful; easy to read but surprisingly deep. In other words, everything a crime novel should be.
February 19, 2021
Every story we tell is, I think, and attempt to resolve some philosophical question. This one was me trying to work out how much being a "good doctor" is conditional on how much knowledge you can cram and how much is character dependent - qualities like empathy, patience and the ability to collaborate. Its also of course a story about how we adapt to any new career - the initial terror of screwing up, quickly replaced by cocky overconfidence, then a sense of our own fallibility.
It was inspired by the story of a real bogus doctor in the UK who was actually a hairdresser but practised successfully for several years before being caught - partly because he was such an amiable guy with good people skills, who learnt, as we all did to lean heavily on the nurses' superior wisdom. My own group of baby medics - me, Tony Hammond, Ray Kelleher - were guided by the fabulous casualty nurse Della Haynes who remains a lifelong friend.
The central murder - killing someone while trying to anaesthetise their arm with a "Biers Block" - was a well known hazard of that procedure and the cause of several documented deaths. Its one of the institutional stories which emergency doctors tell each other, (the way surgeons tell the horror story about amputating the wrong leg) just to remind themselves to be extra careful. Yiannis Gabriel has written a book on these instititional tales and lectures on them as part of his course at Bath University Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies
It was inspired by the story of a real bogus doctor in the UK who was actually a hairdresser but practised successfully for several years before being caught - partly because he was such an amiable guy with good people skills, who learnt, as we all did to lean heavily on the nurses' superior wisdom. My own group of baby medics - me, Tony Hammond, Ray Kelleher - were guided by the fabulous casualty nurse Della Haynes who remains a lifelong friend.
The central murder - killing someone while trying to anaesthetise their arm with a "Biers Block" - was a well known hazard of that procedure and the cause of several documented deaths. Its one of the institutional stories which emergency doctors tell each other, (the way surgeons tell the horror story about amputating the wrong leg) just to remind themselves to be extra careful. Yiannis Gabriel has written a book on these instititional tales and lectures on them as part of his course at Bath University Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies
February 21, 2018
Eh....it was ok. The protagonist was a bit of a dick, so it was really hard to connect with him. It was an interesting end though.
November 9, 2015
Ever dreamed of living another persons life? This book brilliantly explores the realities of what that would be like... A fantastically fast paced medical thriller with a touch of jet black comedy. The author must have worked as a doctor or something because the story is just so wonderfully genuine! 5 stars, must read, and all the rest - for any thriller enthusiast, or anyone just in need of a darn good yarn to read quickly over the weekend.
January 4, 2013
Fantastic medical fiction -- author deserves 5 stars just for the ending!
April 2, 2023
This is a dated, but solid attempt at describing something that feels like it’s right on the edge of all our anxieties - a what if?, your dentist, pilot, doctor ….was somebody who just walked in, just thought they could give it a go? After all, how far away from what we do most days IS that assumption? I’m pretty sure that ‘Just giving it a go’ accounts for more than we’d all be comfortable with professionally speaking. There’s not too much here in truth - so don’t be looking for it, but if you’re interested in a breezy run through of ‘how could you get away with it?’ - this is a good starter.
Read this in an hour and a bit while walking around Fowey in Cornwall - made me happy, now leaving it in an old red phone box outside the pub that is the local book swap. I ‘might’ also be going into the pub, I couldn’t possibly comment.
Read this in an hour and a bit while walking around Fowey in Cornwall - made me happy, now leaving it in an old red phone box outside the pub that is the local book swap. I ‘might’ also be going into the pub, I couldn’t possibly comment.
February 4, 2023
Maybe I'm being a bit unfair. The story is not a badly written one exactly, but I have such a massive conceptual objection that the story is a bit overwhelmed in my mind. I actually WAS a hospital porter for 23 years. I find the way my profession is portrayed in the book deeply patronizing and insulting. On reflection though, it is difficult to grasp the author's own opinions on hospital portering. All we know is the derogatory attitude the Harris character feels towards us. I got the impression that this attitude might after all be an essential element of the theme rather than the author's personal derision. I feel far more well-disposed towards John Collee now than I did when I watched the film.
May 22, 2020
This was a very interesting book, but by the end I was wondering how this guy could have that much good luck and not get caught in at least 1 of his lies. But it was a fun read until everyone started dying. But I really enjoyed reading the book and liked the characters. I hope to read another one of John Collee's books soon.
May 23, 2021
A good story, and at the beginning I felt it was actually quite feasible but I think it went off the deep-end by the end. The character was so unlikeable it makes it hard to give it more than 3 stars; also it felt very dated but I can see it was originally published in 1988 but it felt like it was set in the 60s.
January 30, 2022
Warning: Mild spoilers ahead
It got good towards the end but was so slow through the middle. It was a relatively decent read but nothing really special, in my opinion.
I also honestly just wanted to see him get caught and carted off to prison because I really despised the narrator. I was disappointed that it was only implied in the end and not explicitly stated.
It got good towards the end but was so slow through the middle. It was a relatively decent read but nothing really special, in my opinion.
I also honestly just wanted to see him get caught and carted off to prison because I really despised the narrator. I was disappointed that it was only implied in the end and not explicitly stated.
August 23, 2017
Great premise. Exciting plot and story. Who on earth is giving this one star?
August 27, 2017
I love this book! So different and refreshing, and entertaining from the first page right up to the last 💯
March 23, 2024
Mar 22- mar 23 220 pages
April 2, 2024
A suspense thriller. Easy to read.
September 2, 2024
This felt more like a drama with thriller aspects, but I still really enjoyed it. The hits (for lack of a better word) at the end just keep coming until the very last page.
January 7, 2016
The Tom Ripley comparisons are both valid and deserved. This was a very good story of someone pretending to be who he is not, and the medical backdrop helped make it more unnerving. The final plot twist is a beaut, too.
March 16, 2017
The book was well written and appeared to be well researched. Not sure if it could really happen but it was definitely a good read, Was not too sure about it after the first couple of Chapters but once past the start i could not put it down, read it in about 6 hours.
Brinjg out more like it.
Brinjg out more like it.
May 14, 2016
Hoewel het verhaal een beetje ongeloofwaardig overkomt, is het zodanig geschreven dat je nieuwsgierig wordt. Een onverwacht plot, tot op zekere hoogte. Een typisch verhaal dat zich goed laat verfilmen, wat dus ook al is gebeurd (The paper mask.)
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January 24, 2016A not quite believable medical comedy-drama. The comedy bits are at times hilarious.
August 25, 2016
Ended abruptly, too many unanswered questions.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 17, 2022
I absolutely loved this book. I'm probably a little biased because I watched the film with Paul McGann first (and everyone knows how much I adore him!), but I thought it was very gripping.
January 19, 2016
Interesting look at the mind of the lead character and horrifyingly realistic.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews