I've told both of the people who love me that under no circumstances am I ever to be anesthetized. Nope. Give me a bullet to bite on but don't put me under. I want to know what's going on. Shoot me first. I also never want to be a hospital inpatient again. Hospitals have things like needles and urinary catheters and anal probes. If I'm far enough down the chute that I need that stuff, then just grease the slide and give me a shove. It's just how I feel. Accordingly, if you throw an open book at me that happens to be a medical thriller I'll be sucked right in. Like right now. I'll read about it; I obviously don't mind being vicariously terrified. It's an uphill battle, anyway --- nothing in any book could compare to the horror of dealing with a medical insurance carrier. But Peter Clement tries. And, with CRITICAL CONDITION, he succeeds, unconditionally.

Clement's primary vocation is medicine; he used to head up a hospital emergency room until sanity took hold and he started a private practice. He could sit back and write all of the time if CRITICAL CONDITION and his past novels, such as MUTANT and THE PROCEDURE, are any indication. His medical background, however, provides him with plenty of fodder for subject matter, as well as for, uh, somewhat grisly descriptions of what happens to bodies when they are subjected to certain traumatic procedures, medical and otherwise.

CRITICAL CONDITION, as with most of Clement's novels, begins by mentally grabbing the reader and never letting go. After a brief, momentarily confusing introduction (all is made clear in due time), the reader is transported to the mind of Dr. Kathleen Sullivan, who has just experienced a stroke. Her lover, Dr. Richard Steele, is head of the emergency room at a Manhattan hospital. Dr. Sullivan is rushed to the selfsame hospital where she is placed in the care of Dr. Tony Hamlin, a brilliant neurosurgeon who has had an incredible success rate with stroke victims. Unable to speak yet fully aware of what is going on around her and what is being done to her, Dr. Sullivan finds herself subjected to a regimen of experiments that are almost certain to kill her. Her only hope is to somehow communicate to Dr. Steele what is happening to her, even though that knowledge will put him at even greater personal risk than she herself faces.

Clement's pacing in CRITICAL CONDITION is just about perfect, combining mystery, suspense, and mayhem in equal parts and building to a conclusion that is both terrifying and satisfying. Clement continues to plow fertile ground with his subject matter, and considering the medical advances that occur on an almost daily basis, it is doubtful that he will run out of subjects on which to base his future novels. This is good news for Clement, and even better news for his readership.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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