The Face Transplant

The Face Transplant

by R. Arundel

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GENRE: Medical Suspense Thriller

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BLURB:

The Face Transplant

An epic journey of suspense, murder, and sacrifice

Dr. Matthew MacAulay is a facial transplant surgeon at a prestigious New York hospital. When his friend and mentor, Tom Grabowski, dies under mysterious circumstances, Matthew uncovers his friend’s secret: a new technique that allows perfect facial transplants. No incisions, no scars. Tom was able to accomplish this monumental feat with the help of Alice, a supercomputer robot with almost human abilities. While trying to find the people responsible for murdering Tom, Matthew realizes he is the prime suspect. He must flee for his life with the help of Dr. Sarah Larsson, a colleague and reluctant helper, who has a secret of her own, and Alice, who helps them make sense of a baffling series of seemingly unrelated events. The clues carry Matthew and Sarah around the world. They stumble onto a sinister plot of monumental proportions that leads Matthew all the way to the White House.

The Face Transplant is a powerful medical suspense thriller of the first order. The novel was written by a surgeon who weaves politics, medicine, and espionage into a tightly paced, intelligent thriller.

EXCERPT:

Guaarrr. It sounds like water draining from a very large bathtub, through a very large hole. I just killed myself. I just killed the patient. Dr. Matthew MacAulay looks down on the operating room table at the gaunt, graying man. Matthew quickly scans the operating theater. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the short wide man in

the observation area.

I just killed myself, Sarah, and Amanda.

They have been hijacked into performing a face transplant. The patient is unknown. Mr. Glock, the short wide man, hovers in the far end of the operating room. He made it clear that if the patient did not survive, the three of them would be following him in short order. The 9 mm Glock with a silencer on the end gave credence to his profanity-laced words of warning.

Matthew looks across the operating room table at Amanda Soto, forty-two, an American of Spanish ancestry. She has been his scrub nurse, assisting him in the operating room for the last three years. Divorced, one child.

It will take a few more seconds for the monitors to tell everybody what Matthew already knows. Amanda already knows. She is right across the table. She saw him use the robotic arm to dissect the vessel and mistakenly cut the large artery in the neck. An operating room nurse of Amanda’s experience has seen it all. When Matthew looks into her eyes, they flash ever so quickly an acknowledgement that it is all over. Instead of any words, she quietly unclamps the suction. Now a dull hiss fills the air. To the casual observer, or the short wide man holding a 9 mm Glock pistol in his fat stubby hands, nothing really has changed. Amanda, anesthetist Dr. Sarah Larsson, and Dr. Matthew MacAulay act as if all is going well.

Matthew cannot help but glance over to the man with the 9 mm Glock. In his mind he names him Mr. Glock. Adrenaline surges through Matthew’s body and time slows. The short wide man, Mr. Glock, has gray eyes. Pale, gray eyes. Very pale, almost tired. Matthew remembers reading somewhere that people with gray eyes have the best visual acuity. They make the best marksmen, the best assassins. He wonders if this was true.

A Word From The Author

How to handle negative criticism

Criticism is part of what every writer must expect. People will read your work and will react to the work in different ways. Much of how someone responds to your work has a great deal to do with his or her background, preconceived notions about you and the book, and their own fixed beliefs about the world. This is important to keep in mind since someone can have a negative reaction to your work but the underlying reasons may have very little to do with the book.

The first thing I do when I receive negative criticism is ask myself very honestly if it was justified. If you wrote a passage and had to dump a great deal of material on the reader, someone may say I didn’t like the book because there was too much info dumping. If the criticism is justified acknowledge it. If you wanted to do the info dump for some reason (i.e. just to get the information out of the way quickly to let the reader get on with understanding the story) just let the reader know. Also give an honest appraisal of whether or not you could have handled it better. Maybe added some dialogue or broken it up.

Negative criticism comes in 2 types. Negative negative criticism and Positive negative criticism. 

Negative negative criticism is meant to belittle, demean, disempower and diminish you. You know it when you see it immediately. It is not an honest appraisal of the book or your writing abilities. When you see it, just ignore it. These are often people who don’t have the courage to put their own work out there but take great pleasure in shredding the careful efforts of others.

Positive negative criticism is criticism that states a real concern in a thoughtful and specific manner. Not just ‘this book sucks’  but  ‘this would have been a good book if there had been more backstory to put the story in context’. This is the type of criticism I learn the most from and always appreciate. This makes you think about your book and possibly makes changes. This type of criticism always make you a better writer. I’ll often send a note back letting the person know that I heard their criticism and made some changes, or I thought about that and this is why I did what I did.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

R. Arundel is a practising surgeon. This experience brings realism to the story. The novel asks what would happen if a surgeon were to develop the perfect face transplant.  This would allow people to have a new face, in essence create a new identity. You can create the perfect double, the perfect Doppelganger.

Contact link: http://www.amazon.com/R-Arundel/e/B00EBCQVEC

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