After Effects

Catherine Aird Macmillan, £15.99, pp 224 ISBN 0333 660102

It is difficult to decide whether After Effects is a murder mystery thriller gone badly wrong or an attempt at a 1950s comedy farce along the lines of “Carry On Doctor.” Sadly for us readers, I suspect the former.

After Effects is set in two neighbouring hospitals in the fictional county of Calleshire. Patients and doctors succumb at alarming rates, and their deaths seem to be linked to the Cardigan drug trial. Relatives become suspicious, and the police are informed. The initial investigation concentrates on local animal liberationists and Gilroys Pharmaceuticals.

If there were an award for the most medical cliches in one book then After Effects would be the outright winner. In its pages we meet the unsavoury bunch of consultants around whom the plot revolves. Dr Meggie is the consultant cardiologist—pinstriped suit, bow tie, and floral button hole. His time is spent between the Golden Nuggett (the local private clinic) and the Merry Widow (self explanatory). Dangerous Dan Mcgrew, the maniac surgeon, and Dr Debbe, the nautical pathologist, feature along the way. Female doctors are almost unfailingly referred to as “lady doctors.” They occupy lowly positions, worry about child care, and attend ward rounds for “teaching by humiliation.” Sister Pocock is a nursing sister of the old school, whose purpose in life is to torment junior doctors and venerate consultants. Dr Martin Friar is the cardiology senior registrar, constantly exhausted and hankering after an unbroken night's sleep (an unlikely story for a cardiology senior registrar even before the BMA's “New Deal”).

Apart from the one dimensional caricatures (of which I have described only a few), no other attempt is made to pad out the personalities or the plot. The author obviously has a gloomy and outdated view of the medical profession and does not seem to have been anywhere near a hospital for at least half a century. The doctors are lacking in care or compassion, while “remorse is knocked out of them at medical school.” So much for all the training modern medical students suffer in role playing and counselling. Perhaps the main mystery is why the murderer didn't go on to polish off the rest of the hospital staff and be done with it. The police fare well in the competition for the worst stereotype with the racist, misogynist Superintendent Leyees and the plodding DI Sloan. Animal liberationists, of course, are young and earnest and wear glasses and black woolly tights.

The plot meanders along with little tension or excitement. No attempt is made to explain the motives of the murderer, whose name I won't reveal in the unlikely event that someone who is not paid to write a review wants to read to the end of the book. Those of you who flag after page 12 can turn straight to page 199 for the answer.—SARAH CREIGHTON, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, University College Hospital, London