The Hollow Men
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Dr. Harry Kent likes to keep himself busy—juggling hospital duties with his work as a police surgeon for the London Metropolitan Police—anything to ward off the memories of his time as an army medic.Usually the police work means minor injuries and mental health assessments. But teenager Solomon Idris’s case is different. Idris has taken eight people hostage in a fast-food restaurant, and is demanding to see a lawyer and a BBC reporter. Harry is sent in to treat the clearly-ill teenager . . . before the siege goes horribly wrong.When Solomon’s life is put in danger again at a critical care ward, it becomes clear he knows something people will kill to protect. Determined to uncover the secret that drove the boy to such desperate action, Harry soon realizes that someone in the medical world, someone he may even know, has broken the doctors’ commandment to “do no harm” many times over . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Medical student McCarthy's accomplished first novel and series launch plunges Harry Kent, a London ER doctor who also serves as an on-call doctor for police matters (the British term is police surgeon), into a difficult situation: 17-year-old Solomon Idris has taken hostages in a fast-food restaurant and he needs medical help. Idris will let three hostages go if a physician treats him. Kent enters the restaurant, where he starts to treat Idris, but when the snipers covering Kent hear a gunshot, they shoot, wounding Idris. The teenager is taken to a hospital, where someone tries to kill him. The angry, determined Kent makes it his mission to save Idris and to find out what made him resort to such a violent act. Kent's considerable backstory as an army doctor in Afghanistan includes his connection to James Lahiri, a doctor who saved Kent's life overseas and has been treating Idris in London. McCarthy provides a fascinating look at the sociology of crime and policing while deftly exploring the motivations of Idris, Kent, and Lahiri.
