Hermes' Viper

by Joseph T. McFadden

Joseph T. McFadden writes from his forty-three-year experience as a neurosurgeon, most of this time in a large municipal hospital of a melting-pot American city. This reissue of his first novel, Hermes’ Viper coincides remarkably with current media reports of harm done to patients and offers an inside view of vital interest to every person who would trust a family member to the medical system. His second novel, The Wafer, addressing the organ donor dilemma, and his book of short stories, Fulton’s Monkey, are in the process of re-publication. A non-fiction work, Life in the Deadly World of Medicine, and two novels, A Hooker in the Choir, and The Burnt Offering are in press now. He is at work on his fifth novel, The DNA Rose, and a second collection of short stories. Virtual reality, fuzzy logic, artificial intelligence and forensic psychiatry together reveal the fire-scarred and brilliant woman who has stalked her favorite doctor for sixteen years leaving a trail of deaths and flimsy evidence not quite adding up to murder. As she moves to eliminate everything still standing in her way, her victim tries to save her next targets from the fatal fire of her deadly derangement.

620 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Joseph T. McFadden writes from his forty-three-year experience as a neurosurgeon, most of his time in a large municipal hospital of a melting pot American city. The advent of his first novel, Hermes' Viper, coincides remarkably with recent media reports of harm done to patients by the modern medical system, and offers an inside view of vital interest to every person who would trust a family member to a hospital.

His second novel, The Wafer, addresses the organ donor dilemma. He currently is finishing the third, A Hooker In The Choir, set in the nursing home scene of the American landscape; it also deals with HMO problems.

He is a native of Oxford, Mississippi, a graduate of Ole Miss and the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He was the founder and first chairman of the committee representing neurosurgery at the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) to write consensus standards for nervous system implants.

Dr. McFadden is also designer and inventor of McFadden Aneurysm Clip, the three dimensional analog headrest for neurosurgery, and the analog head clamp for neurosurgery. He is emeritus chairman and professor of Neurosurgery, Eastern Virginia Medical School, and a former member of the advisory panel on neurology and neurosurgery devices and drugs to the FDA.

Reviews

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

After winning this book on First Reads (in exchange for an honest review) and receiving this in the mail, I was a little shocked by its size. Obviously, I don't look at the physical description before entering to win a book. However, despite it's heft, I made it through Hermes' Viper in four days. This is partly because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to finish it in a week, so I was reading it all the time, but also because I was drawn in; I didn't find it difficult to read this book for six or seven hours a day. Sometimes, if I read for that long, I get sick of it; not so with Hermes' Viper. From page twelve or so, I was trying to figure out who in Dr. Holton's life Hera was. I suspected the correct person because of how she reacted to Holton's brusque attitude towards her, and then told myself "No, no it can't be her." This is a good thing. I mean, I feel a little dumb, but I'd rather feel dumb and surprised than brilliant and bored. (When I'm reading, at least.)

My biggest complaint with McFadden's novel is that, on occasion, he gets into the big concepts and verges on rambling about them (see the last page for an example). He doesn't quite get to rambling, but these passages required that I go back and read them two or three or four times to understand what he was saying, and to keep the idea from before-concept flowing into after-concept ideas. Similarly, though less irritating, there are occasions when McFadden's characters don't seem to speak to each other like people, but like actors reading from a list of concepts (not a script). "The audience needs to know this, so I'm going to say this." (I'd offer a page number, but after 564 pages, I can't pick out just one for you.)

My last complaint isn't really a complaint at all. Most novels of this type are over between 200 and 300 pages. So when I got to about page 330, I started going, "Is over yet? When are they going to figure it out? How much more do I have left?" While I could say "McFadden dragged on and on and on," I won't. Instead, I think that this sense of impatience and anxiousness helped me to understand some of what the characters were experiencing. They wanted to know who was stalking Holton, too, and they were all just as impatient as I was. This impatience, coupled with McFadden's descriptions of the surgeries performed by Holton and the insights into Hera's psyche, made Hermes' Viper a surprisingly quick and effectively engrossing read.

I received a free copy through FirstReads in exchange for an honest review.

[Barb · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading this book several months ago but was put off by the graphic description of a nude, psychotic woman in the first few pages and set it aside. As it was a give-away from the author I felt I had to try once more to read it.

This is a thriller mostly set within the confines of a large hospital in Chicago, my home town and I rather expected to recognize some landmarks in the book but could only relate the description of the hospital to old Cook County Hospital - there were no other memorable local references. I was also taken by the neurosurgical reference as I've worked in that field.

The protagonist is a neurosurgeon who is rather naive regarding hospital politics. His life is terrorized by an unknown person and part of the narrative by this person, the psychotic woman, describes how she rids him of patients she believes will only waste his time. Eventually we discover she has also removed others who she feels are in the way of his realizing his connection to her.

There is much in the story regarding poor practice and malfeasance in the hospital setting...in fact, enough to make one determined never to leave a loved one alone in a hospital setting. The treatment of these facts by the hospital administration made me uncomfortable as I found it difficult to believe but how does one know?

Though the ending is a surprise, and the story line interesting, I found this to be a difficult book to read. I can see it as a thriller type movie, but I don't think I would go to see it.

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

It takes a lot for me to start reading a book and decide I'm not interested in finishing it. I've waded through a lot of crap. I had no interest in going past the first chapter of this book. I was turned off from the first paragraph. A graphic description of a nude female ("hard nipples" and "honey-brown aereolae", seriously? In the FIRST paragraph? I didn't realize I was reading a porno) is hardly the way to begin a serious novel. The typo in the first sentence jumped out at me, to the point that I actually turned to see who the publisher was, surprised at how poor their proof readers were. Appears to be self-published. That explains a lot. Honestly, the book was so poorly written and did nothing to capture my intrigue. As a mother of a small child and a small business owner, I have limited time for reading as it is, and would rather move on to something that piques my interest.