Stronger Than Death by
Manda Scott
hbk out November 99
Published by Headline
at £17.99
Bad things come in threes. Eric, a hospital doctor, is the first to die, climbing solo on a treacherous sea cliff. Joey, a surgeon, chokes on his own vomit after a routine drinking binge. Then Martin, a medical
statistician, killed by a substitution of one drug for another. But when apparent accident strikes three people with a shared past, it's hard to escape the idea of design.
Therapist Kellen Stewart is close enough to the dead -- and the living -- to understand what connects those deaths. And when a fourth, horrible death
follows, the finger points inexorably at Kellen's closest friend, pathologist Lee Adams. In the nightmare that follows, everything Kellen
holds dear is called into question as she pits her wits against a cunning killer with a very personal agenda.
As always with Manda Scott's thought-provoking novels, Stronger Than Death
is far more than a taut and nerve-wracking thriller. Scott calls into question medical and private ethics and explores the darkest reaches of the human heart with an anatomist's cool and precise gaze, all in beautifully cadenced prose that rivets the reader. Probably the best read of this autumn's crop.
(
Val McDermid
- Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill)
