Tattoo: A Medical Thriller

by Anthony Britto

Overview

Plastic surgeon Gareth Lloyd splits his time between repairing accident victims at local hospitals and trying—largely in vain—to persuade his private patients in a Los Angeles suburb to have the kind of expensive nips and tucks so popular in Beverly Hills. Divorced, behind in his support payments for his two daughters, and about to turn 40, Lloyd's main connection to the glamorous side of plastic surgery is the affair he has just ended with the wife of a prominent facelifter-to-the-stars named Jack Ehrenberger. When Ehrenberger is murdered, Lloyd becomes one of the suspects and has to find the real killer. Anthony Britto, a plastic surgeon himself, writes in a brisk, energetic style.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312302306
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/15/1997
Edition description:	Student ed.
Pages:	388
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Anthony Britto is a plastic surgeon and the author of Tattoo.

Editorial Reviews

"Anthony Britto, a plastic surgeon himself, writes in a brisk, energetic style." - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

The life of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon isn't all glamorous indolence—not if the surgeon is 40ish Dr. Gareth Lloyd, whose rounds of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, Scotch and frozen pizza, child visitation and discreet adultery, are rudely interrupted by the shooting of his colleague Dr. Jack Ehrenberger, patron saint of Hollywood faces, upscale art collector, and husband of Lloyd's current mistress. The police are naturally interested in Lloyd's recent activities—but not half as interested as Lloyd, who knows Jack was killed with Lloyd's own gun, is in Jack's once he puts his murder together with the killings two and three months ago of two other plastic surgeons in Texas. Has somebody (somebody like Lloyd's latest client, unsavory Fernando Rojas) declared open season on cosmetic surgeons? As Lloyd grows ever more paranoid—he thinks he's being followed by somebody in a blue Taurus, somebody in a gray suit, somebody with a crew cut, somebody in a dirty white van—his persistent questions, and his dalliance with dazzling collector Miranda Pelton, start to tie Jack's murder in to $10 million in stolen paintings and a white supremacist network, with an offhand kidnapping still to come. One problem Lloyd won't have to worry about: His 40th birthday will be anything but dull.

The kitchen-sink plotting and risible motive for the killings sink this first mystery, leaving only a plastic surgeon's endearing pipe-dream of life in the fast lane.

Kirkus Reviews