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WORK TITLE: The Hollow Men
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://robmccarthybooks.com/
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Attending medical school.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and medical student.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Rob McCarthy is a British writer and medical student. He is the author of crime novels. In an article he wrote on the Crime Files Web site, McCarthy commented on the influence the writer Thomas Harris has had on his work. He stated: “His characters, heroes and villains alike, are each so real, from the movie stars to the inconsequential witnesses. It’s something I’ve learned a lot from, and if I can emulate even a hundredth of that in one of my books, it’s something I’ll be very happy about.”
The Hollow Men
In 2016 McCarthy released his first book, The Hollow Men. The volume is also the first book in the “Harry Kent” series. In it, McCarthy offers background information on the series’s protagonist, Kent. Kent served in a medical unit in Afghanistan and was seriously injured during battle. He now works as a surgeon for the London Metropolitan Police. Kent is assigned to work on a hostage situation involving a teenager named Solomon Idris. The police shoot Idris, and he is taken to a hospital, where his treatment is botched. Kent believes someone intended for Idris to die. He begins investigating who might want Idris dead.
McCarthy told a contributor to the Liz Loves Books Web site: “I really wanted to keep the medicine as realistic as possible, as it does annoy me on television shows when someone’s gravely injured, the doctors swoop in and they’re walking and talking the next day. In reality, those miracles can happen, but it takes teams of dozens of people and weeks or months before the patient is back to normal, if that’s ever achieved. That’s difficult to portray in a dramatic sense, though, so sometimes in the book I cut down the number of people who would be involved just so it’s easier to follow.”
The Hollow Men received mixed reviews. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews commented: “While Harry is at times an empathetic healer, McCarthy stuffs his debut with too much medical minutia, overwhelming whatever suspense there may have been.” Paul LaRosa, a critic on the New York Journal of Books Web site, suggested: “The novel has plenty of action, almost too much.” LaRosa added: “McCarthy reportedly is or was a fourth-year medical student himself and the novel reflects that although it’s questionable if that’s a good thing. There is a tremendous level of detail about medical procedures, which at times feels superfluous.” However, a Publishers Weekly reviewer asserted: “McCarthy provides a fascinating look at the sociology of crime and policing.” “This fast-paced mix of medical thriller and crime novel keeps readers guessing until the surprising finale,” wrote Lisa O’Hara in Xpress Reviews. Jenny Maloney, a contributor to the Criminal Element Web site, remarked: “The Hollow Men by medical student Rob McCarthy is a fascinating read. Part British police-procedural, part medical thriller, McCarthy has packed his debut with one beautifully described, tension-filled scene after another. His characters–particularly the main man Harry Kent–are sharp and incisive. And McCarthy has obviously studied his medicine.” Maloney concluded: “Rob McCarthy has created a particularly sharp and incisive medical thriller in The Hollow Men. As the first in a series, it will be exciting to see how Harry Kent develops over time as he engages in the medical, law enforcement, and social circles of London.” Another writer on the Criminal Element Web site, David Cranmer, suggested: “Let’s make room for Dr. Kent because, though he occasionally gets himself bogged down in the specifics of his profession (the saving of Solomon’s life is in exhaustive detail), author Rob McCarthy—who is a medical student in his fourth year—keeps it, for the most part, readable to the layman.” Cranmer also described The Hollow Men as “well worth your time.” “Written with admirable verve and lacerating detail, it announces the arrival of a shiny new talent in British crime writing and grips from the start,” asserted Geoffrey Wansell on the Daily Mail Web site.
A Handful of Ashes
Kent returns in the second volume of the series, A Handful of Ashes. This volume finds him investigating an attack that occurred during a series of riots in London, as well as the brutal death of a whistle-blower at a hospital that seems at first glance to be a suicide. He also interacts with his ex-girlfriend, detective Frances Noble.
Claire Looby, a reviewer on the Irish Times Web site, commented: “In these days of whistle-blowers in the media, Rob McCarthy’s latest tale … seems well timed.” Writing on the Crime Review Web site, Linda Wilson suggested: “His detailed background knowledge positively leaps off every page, from the efforts the hospital teams make to bring someone back to life to a gut-churning description of an emergency open-heart procedure being performed with minimal equipment on someone’s living room floor.” Wilson added: “McCarthy combines police work and medical detail into a seamless whole that drags the reader through the story at an ever-increasing pace.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2016, review of The Hollow Men.
Publishers Weekly, September 5, 2016, review of The Hollow Men, p. 54.
Xpress Reviews, December 2, 2016, Lisa O’Hara, review of The Hollow Men.
ONLINE
Crime Files, http://crimefiles.co.uk/ (February 23, 2016), “My Accomplice,” article by author.
Crime Review, http://crimereview.co.uk/ (April 14, 2017), Linda Wilson, review of A Handful of Ashes.
Criminal Element, http://www.criminalelement.com/ (December 22, 2016), Jenny Maloney, review of The Hollow Men; (January 2, 2017), David Cranmer, review of The Hollow Men.
Daily Mail Online (London, England), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ (February 25, 2016), Geoffrey Wansell, review of The Hollow Men.
Irish Times Online, http://www.irishtimes.com/ (April 1, 2017), Claire Looby, review of A Handful of Ashes.
Liz Loves Books, http://lizlovesbooks.com/ (February 22, 2016), author interview.
New York Journal of Books, http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (January 31, 2017), Paul LaRosa, review of The Hollow Men.
Rob McCarthy Books, https://robmccarthybooks.com/ (June 16, 2017), author home page.*
QUOTED: "I really wanted to keep the medicine as realistic as possible, as it does annoy me on TV shows when someone’s gravely injured, the doctors swoop in and they’re walking and talking the next day. In reality, those miracles can happen, but it takes teams of dozens of people and weeks or months before the patient is back to normal, if that’s ever achieved. That’s difficult to portray in a dramatic sense, though, so sometimes in the book I cut down the number of people who would be involved just so it’s easier to follow."
The Hollow Men by Rob McCarthy. Interview and Review
By LizLovesBooks | February 22, 2016 | Blog Tour, Latest Blog, Latest Reads
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Today I’m VERY happy to welcome Rob McCarthy to the blog telling us a little more about The Hollow Men – a really brilliant medical thriller that I highly recommend.
The Hollow Men is fantastic – I’m genuinely crazy about Harry already. As a medical student how did you manage to fit in the writing around what must be a hectic life?
Thank you – I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s a challenge at times. I wrote the first draft during my first two years at university when I had a bit more free time, but now I’m in clinical years the time pressure does start to build. I tend to write either late at night,on trains and buses, or during the holidays. Peripheral placements where I’m stuck in hospital accommodation without internet connection help as well… All that said, I do really enjoy writing and find it bizarrely relaxing. It’s a chance to escape and be creative, which I don’t really get to do in my day job.
Is there a bit of you in Harry or is he based on anyone you know?
I would say no, but some of my friends who’ve read the book would disagree… I guess one similarity is that we’re both medics who have an interest in the criminal/forensic world. I would also hope that I have a bit more self-control than he does! I think we see the world in a similar way, though. The things that make Harry angry are the things that anger me, too. I get so frustrated seeing vulnerable people in hospital with drug or alcohol problems who I know will be back again, because society’s got no solutions for them. I guess part of writing the book was to create a character who could, and did, do something about those injustices.
Is it difficult to keep authenticity within the medical details AND make it exciting? Because it was exciting…
It’s challenging sometimes, yeah. I really wanted to keep the medicine as realistic as possible, as it does annoy me on TV shows when someone’s gravely injured, the doctors swoop in and they’re walking and talking the next day. In reality, those miracles can happen, but it takes teams of dozens of people and weeks or months before the patient is back to normal, if that’s ever achieved. That’s difficult to portray in a dramatic sense, though, so sometimes in the book I cut down the number of people who would be involved just so it’s easier to follow.
Can you tell us anything about what is next for Harry Kent?
Absolutely. His investigation of Zara carries on, and by the start of the second book he’s managed to get a Scotland Yard detective interested and they’ve recorded a TV appeal. He’s also ended a stormy relationship with Frankie Noble, who drags him into a case involving the
suspicious death of a whistle-blowing doctor at a children’s hospital under investigation for a high mortality rate.The case is obviously close to home and despite lots of good reasons not to, Harry finds himself getting heavily involved… I hope that readers will really invest in the characters, as I’ve got lots of places I’d like to take them!
Finally tell us a little about you – coffee or tea drinker? Anything exciting on the bucket list (if you have one) ? Any writing heroes?
Coffee drinker, strong and often – cups of tea are luxuries reserved for Sunday afternoons with feet up and the football on. And asking a writer, or indeed a reader, their writing heroes is inviting an essay, so I’ll give you a few: Michael Connelly, James Lee Burke and John Sandford for series that conjure up something new with every book, Arnaldur Indridason and Henning Mankell for creating truly real characters and being unafraid to pull them apart, and Thomas Harris and Mo Hayder for scaring the living crap out of me.
About the book:
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Publication Date: 25th Feb from Hodder and Staughton
Source: Review Copy
Dr Harry Kent likes to keep busy: juggling hospital duties with his work as a police surgeon for the 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 Solomon Idris’s case is different. Solomon Idris has taken eight people hostage in a chicken takeaway, 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 from the safety of 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 realises that someone in the medical world, someone he may even know, has broken the doctors’ commandment ‘do no harm’ many times over…
The Hollow Men managed to do something that hasn’t been done for a while – engage me in a thriller that included medical elements, I’ve found for a while now that when I pick one of those up the threads of the tale that include that side of things has either been too complicated or not that authentic. Then comes Rob McCarthy and The Hollow Men which is exciting, dramatic and manages to make medicine seem both uber cool and easy to understand.
Harry Kent is the anchor holding all this together – he is likeable yet flawed, like all the characters within the pages of The Hollow Men, very realistic and intriguing to follow. I may have fallen a little in book love here not only because this is a rocking story but because every element of it feels real and like something that could be happening just around the corner. Those are always the best ones because the emotional pull is so much greater.
Rob McCarthy manages to make this both character driven and fascinating, whilst adding in some real edge of the seat moments, thought provoking social themes and has created a real page turner that absolutely has heart and soul. I loved it. Roll on the next Harry Kent novel. Long may he be around.
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Happy Reading Folks!
QUOTED: "His characters, heroes and villains alike, are each so real, from the movie stars to the inconsequential witnesses. It’s something I’ve learned a lot from, and if I can emulate even a hundredth of that in one of my books, it’s something I’ll be very happy about."
MY ACCOMPLICE – BY ROB MCCARTHY
My Accomplice
Rob McCarthy, author of our debut of the month THE HOLLOW MEN, tells us about his biggest crime-writing inspiration.
Posted on February 23, 2016 in Guest Author, My Accomplice
Tags: Inspiration, my accomplice
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Asking any crime writer, or indeed any crime reader, to choose a single writer for an article about their inspiration, is a tough ask. Which is probably why I’ve been putting off writing this post for so long (or at least what I’ll claim). I could easily wax lyrical about the psychopathic creations of Mo Hayder, the inimitable series of James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly, or the existential bleakness of Arnaldur Indridason. But instead, I’m going to a choose a writer who manages to be simultaneously world-famous and obscure – Thomas Harris.
The man who created Hannibal Lecter, psychiatrist, cannibal, cordon-bleu chef and quintessential serial killer, spawning blockbuster films and the recent TV series, has lived a relatively quiet existence for one so successful. Rarely giving interviews, Harris’s life is not a public one, which means in terms of inspiration his writing will have to speak for him. Fortunately, his books are, in my opinion, some of the best crime fiction written.
Harris has, to our knowledge, published only five books. Four are in the Hannibal Lecter canon – the fourth, Hannibal Rising, was by the author’s own admission never a book he wanted to write, and was penned only because Warner Brothers had bought the rights to the character and were going to make a prequel film whether he wrote a book first or not. The first book, 1975’s Black Sunday, is a Forsyth-esque thriller about CIA and Mossad agents trying to thwart a Palestinian terrorist attack on the Super Bowl. Whilst pretty far from the Hannibal Lecter series in terms of plot, the beginnings of Harris’s trademark signs were there, as were some of the best-loved features of the books (FBI agents, profilers and the like).
Which brings me to the first in the series and possibly my favourite crime novel of all time, Red Dragon. The prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, I believe it is by far the standout of Harris’s works and the series. Former New Orleans police detective and FBI agent Will Graham is roped into an investigation where two entire families have been slaughtered a month apart, one in Birmingham, one in Atlanta. All the mirrors in the houses have been smashed, and the pieces used to carry out the murders. The FBI know they have a serial killer on their hands, but they need a headstart, and Graham is the one man they know can truly get into a psychopath’s head. He has an eye for forensic detail, too, and he’s also the man who caught Hannibal Lecter.
This book truly is Harris at his best. Every character is fleshed out, real and terrifying, be it the tortured Will Graham, his army of FBI colleagues or the jobsworthy, well-meaning local police, a tabloid reporter, and of course Lecter himself. Harris was ahead of the curve in so many ways. Red Dragon, and The Silence of the Lambs, were books about profiling before the psychological profiler was a stock character in every crime novel. The forensic detail, in an era before DNA, is also incredible, with genuinely original methods employed both by the killer to cover his tracks and Graham and his team to catch him. And the writing itself is sublime. I can recall almost from memory three lines, so perfect in their understated tragedy, which would make Hemingway proud. It describes the demise of Graham’s partner’s first husband, as follows:
He got a tryout with the Cardinals and hit safely in his first two games. Then he began to have difficulty swallowing. The surgeon tried to get it all, but it metastasised and ate him up.
And then, of course, there’s Hannibal. Whilst Harris’s most famous creation has his moments, such as sending Graham a colostomy bag in the post to remind him of the abdominal knife wound he inflicted, and the macabre humour by which he describes his cannibalistic gourmet creations, he is by no means Harris’s scariest character. That would be reserved for the terrifying Francis Dolarhyde, and perhaps his better-known counterpart from Silence of the Lambs, Buffalo Bill. He spares no expense detailing these characters’ genesis, and manages the absurdity of making their psychopathy seem rational, if you were to view the world through their eyes. With villains like these, his heroes don’t stand a chance of coming through unscathed.
And that’s why Harris holds such significance for me. He is unafraid to torture, both physically and mentally, his heroes. A bugbear of mine with contemporary crime fiction is how many protagonists are exposed to horror after horror but somehow manage to carry on regardless, perhaps with a few too many whiskies and a few wry jokes. In reality, many would collapse into madness and depression, and that risk feels so real in a Harris book. His characters, heroes and villains alike, are each so real, from the movie stars to the inconsequential witnesses. It’s something I’ve learned a lot from, and if I can emulate even a hundredth of that in one of my books, it’s something I’ll be very happy about.
Rob McCarthy’s debut novel THE HOLLOW MEN publishes this Thursday, 25th February.
QUOTED: "While Harry is at times an empathetic healer, McCarthy stuffs his debut with too much medical minutia, overwhelming whatever suspense there may have been."
McCarthy, Rob: THE HOLLOW MEN
Kirkus Reviews. (Oct. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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McCarthy, Rob THE HOLLOW MEN Pegasus Crime (Adult Fiction) $25.95 12, 20 ISBN: 978-1-68177-249-3
A London police surgeon becomes entangled in the case of a teenager who takes a restaurant full of people hostage.Dr. Harry Kent divides his time between working with the London Metropolitan Police as a Force Medical Examiner--everyone calls them police surgeons though he never wields a scalpel--and as an anesthetist at John Ruskin University Hospital. He's called out to an active scene, already an unusual situation, where a visibly ill 17-year-old named Solomon Idris has taken a group of people hostage at a fried chicken joint. His demands are strange: he wants to speak to a lawyer and have his statement broadcast on the BBC. When Harry manages to speak to him, Solomon rambles on about a girl named Keisha and how "they" killed her and never paid the consequences. Solomon's plan predictably doesn't go well--hostage situations rarely do when there are armed police outside--but Harry suspects there are larger forces at play. Even when Solomon arrives at the hospital, bloody but alive, one medical catastrophe after another makes Harry, and even the skeptical DI Frances Noble, suspect that Solomon may be part of a larger scheme. They discover the boy is HIV-positive, and his rantings about Keisha, who it turns out committed suicide months earlier, may not be as crazy as they first sounded. Harry, who carries the expected physical and emotional scars from his time as a medic in Afghanistan, is determined to help not only Solomon, but also those others whose voices are routinely silenced by the more powerful. While Harry is at times an empathetic healer, McCarthy stuffs his debut with too much medical minutia, overwhelming whatever suspense there may have been.
QUOTED: "McCarthy provides a fascinating look at the sociology of crime and policing."
The Hollow Men
Publishers Weekly. 263.36 (Sept. 5, 2016): p54.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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* The Hollow Men
Rob McCarthy. Pegasus Crime (Norton, dist.), $25.95 (368p) ISBN 978-1-68177-249-3
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
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. Agent: Jane Gregory, Gregory & Company (U.K.). (Dec.)
QUOTED: "This fast-paced mix of medical thriller and crime novel keeps readers guessing until the surprising finale."
McCarthy, Rob. The Hollow Men
Lisa O'Hara
Xpress Reviews. (Dec. 2, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
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McCarthy, Rob. The Hollow Men. Pegasus Crime. Dec. 2016. 368p. ISBN 9781681772493. $25.95; ebk. ISBN 9781681772912. MYS
[DEBUT] This debut mystery introduces Dr. Harry Kent, a veteran of Afghanistan who was critically injured while serving in a forward medical unit and saved by his best friend. Now working with the London Metropolitan Police as a police surgeon, he is called in to treat 17-year-old Solomon Idris, who has taken hostages in a local fast-food restaurant and who is one of his old friend's patients. Solomon demands to talk to a lawyer, but as Kent is treating him, the police storm the restaurant and shoot the teenager. The boy is rushed to the hospital, and the next day his life is again endangered when his treatment is mixed up. It becomes clear that someone does not want Solomon to talk, and Kent begins to suspect that the "someone" is in the medical field.
Verdict This fast-paced mix of medical thriller and crime novel keeps readers guessing until the surprising finale. McCarthy's medical knowledge as a fourth-year medical student and the South London setting give this book an authenticity that draws mystery fans in and will have them looking forward to the next Dr. Harry Kent novel.--Lisa O'Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg
QUOTED: "The novel has plenty of action, almost too much."
"
McCarthy reportedly is or was a fourth-year medical student himself and the novel reflects that although it’s questionable if that’s a good thing. There is a tremendous level of detail about medical procedures, which at times feels superfluous."
The Hollow Men: A Novel
Image of The Hollow Men: A Novel
Author(s):
Rob McCarthy
Release Date:
December 19, 2016
Publisher/Imprint:
Pegasus Books
Pages:
368
Buy on Amazon
Reviewed by:
Paul LaRosa
The hero of this first-in-a-series novel by Rob McCarthy derives its title from a poem by T. S. Eliot. “Hollow men,” according to one of McCarthy’s characters, are individuals who have lost their souls to violence or causes and are desperate to fill the void.
Enter the book’s protagonist Dr. Harry Kent, a former Army medic, now doing double duty as a doctor and police surgeon. Filling his void is a full-time job apparently.
“Surgeon” is a bit of a misnomer used by London’s Metropolitan Police force because, in the opening pages, Harry finds himself dispatched to negotiate with a desperate teenager holding hostages inside a chicken shop.
Harry, we’re told later by a friend, is a “hollow man” partially because of a wartime encounter in which his life was saved by his best friend Dr. James Lahiri. Harry repaid his best friend by “shagging” his wife, a betrayal that understandably weighs heavily on Harry’s mind. That bit of business, together with his own survivor’s guilt, has transformed Harry into a “hollow man” who is bent on saving his soul.
With Harry’s far-from-perfect past established, the novel focuses on the present case at the hand: Who is trying to kill a teenage, HIV-positive addict? Despite the police ordering Harry not to investigate on his own, he does so anyway, and of course every one of his hunches or actions save the day. At least to this reader, Harry becomes an annoying know-it-all.
The novel has plenty of action, almost too much. It is hard to believe that Harry is always so spot-on and far smarter than nearly every copper he comes across. Why doesn’t McCarthy dispense with the doctor setup and just make him a detective already?
McCarthy reportedly is or was a fourth-year medical student himself and the novel reflects that although it’s questionable if that’s a good thing. There is a tremendous level of detail about medical procedures, which at times feels superfluous.
Of course, the author throws in a female police love interest for Harry, but it feels very cookie cutter, as though someone advised the author he needed to appeal to female readers. She of course has her own demons—her superiors are out to get her!—and that too feels as though the author is piling on problems to give the character depth.
The Hollow Men is satisfying as a quick read but as a series, it feels like it will get tiresome. When it comes to contemporary London crime procedurals, author Rob McCarthy has a long way to go to top the Cormoran Strike thrillers written by Robert Galbraith who of course is J. K. Rowling.
Those books are anything but hollow; they’re filled with a delicious center.
Paul LaRosa's most recent book is a memoir, Leaving Story Avenue. He is also a journalist whose work, including book reviews across a wide range of genres, has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and on CBS News.
QUOTED: "The Hollow Men by medical student Rob McCarthy is a fascinating read. Part British police-procedural, part medical thriller, McCarthy has packed his debut with one beautifully described, tension-filled scene after another. His characters–particularly the main man Harry Kent–are sharp and incisive. And McCarthy has obviously studied his medicine."
"Rob McCarthy has created a particularly sharp and incisive medical thriller in The Hollow Men. As the first in a series, it will be exciting to see how Harry Kent develops over time as he engages in the medical, law enforcement, and social circles of London."
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FRESH MEAT
Review: The Hollow Men by Rob McCarthy
JENNY MALONEY
The Hollow Men by Rob McCarthy follows police surgeon Harry Kent, who's determined to help those the world would rather brush aside, in a smart and electrifying new crime series that evokes the often-hidden medical world of the London Metropolitan Police.
As an army medic, Dr. Harry Kent has seen the effects of war and the damage they can do to personal and professional relationships. Determined to make a positive difference in the world despite his history, Kent serves as an emergency doctor and police surgeon for the London Metropolitan Police. He doesn’t sleep much. He’s managing.
Enter teenager Solomon Idris.
Idris, a young man from the wrong side of the tracks, takes eight people hostage in a fast-food restaurant. His demands are simple: a lawyer and a BBC reporter. What he receives is Harry Kent—sent in by the MET to determine Idris’s health and mental stability. But in the middle of Kent’s evaluation, things go wrong. Shots are fired, and Idris is hit in the abdomen.
Kent and a team of dedicated surgeons manage to get him in stable-but-critical condition. Then a “mix-up” in meds threatens Idris’s life again. And the more Kent learns about Idris, the more he believes that someone is covering up something big—big enough to kill a teenage kid for.
The Hollow Men by medical student Rob McCarthy is a fascinating read. Part British police-procedural, part medical thriller, McCarthy has packed his debut with one beautifully described, tension-filled scene after another. His characters—particularly the main man Harry Kent—are sharp and incisive. And McCarthy has obviously studied his medicine.
When we meet Harry Kent, we meet a man who is A) tired, B) capable, and C) brave. He’s just fallen asleep when the phone call beckoning him to intervene in a hostage negotiation wakes him. But he doesn’t complain; he doesn’t try to convince the police to call someone else in. He gets up, gets dressed, and shows up at the scene, which is controlled by Frankie Noble—a police officer who is very invested in her neighborhood and cares whether the job gets done right. Once on scene, Kent is sent into a Chicken Hut wearing a bullet proof vest and his wits:
Harry looked around and buried an almost uncontrollable desire to burst out laughing. Here he was, less than an hour after waking up in an empty flat, the scaffold of his mind held up by speed, standing in a fried chicken shop with an armed teenager. A chill ran through him, despite all the layers he had on, and he saw that the hostages were all shivering too.
…
“Take off the vest.”
No sooner was the command out of Idris’s mouth than he collapsed into a fit of visceral coughing, his body jerking with every spasm.
Harry’s eyes moved down to the gun on the table. A pocket-sized revolver, one of the thousands of street guns that circulated around the city. It looked small-calibre, not one of the magnum varieties which could cut through Kevlar like it was paper. At this range, Harry’s vest would stop the bullet.
Idris nodded at one of the hostages, the young girl with her parents. “Take it off, bruv, or I waste the girl.”
Her father let out a whimper, and Harry released the Velcro strap keeping the vest in place, sliding his arms out of the fleece and laying it and the vest on the ground. He decided that under no circumstances would he give the vest to Idris.
However, once Kent starts talking to Idris, he slowly comes round to the idea that someone, or several someones, may be threatening Idris enough to drive the teenager to commit this violent act. Just when he’s starting to get somewhere with the kid—including getting a few hostages released—shots are fired, and Idris is hit.
It’s in the chaotic situation that follows where Kent really comes into his own as a character. Where an average man on the street would be a lousy narrative POV for a scene like this, Kent’s adds a sense of reason and calm. He prioritizes the pieces that need to be prioritized, bringing order both to the world of an active shooting and to the storytelling elements while taking the reader along step-by-step in an engaging and fascinating way.
Then we get to the operating theatre.
This is where McCarthy’s descriptions shine. Two of the possible pitfalls of medical thrillers are: too much information and information not presented clearly enough to follow the stakes of the situation. McCarthy manages to both explain the seriousness of the situation (so you always understand the threat posed to the character on the bed—in this case, Idris) and give the reader the correct amount of information without sounding lecture-y.
Anesthetists were the experts at placing lines, and Traubert had the most experience of anyone in the room, but Harry immediately knelt down on the opposite side of the patient to his supervisor and began searching the other arm. Without a good IV line, there was no way to get blood into Idris, and it would keep leaking out of the hole in his abdomen, and he would die. It was as simple as that.
“I’ve got nothing here,” Harry said. All the veins in the usual places—the back of the hand, the inner surface of the elbow, the forearm—had collapsed. These are the moment you live for, Harry told himself. The moment you were trained to overcome. Get a neck vein, or a scalp one. Use the ultrasound machine to guide you in. Find a way, any way. In these moments the chaos in his head would eventually stop and he would know the right course of action in an instant.
He knew.
Luckily, Harry Kent isn’t only sharp in the operating theatre. After getting Idris stable, he thinks things are in the clear. Not so much. Someone changes Idris’s allergies on his medical chart, resulting in a dangerous, life-threatening reaction, which Kent barely manages to get under control. There are coincidences, and then there are coincidences. And when Kent digs deeper into Idris’s background, into his neighborhood, into his associates, he discovers that it may just be a doctor—someone much closer to home—with something to hide.
Rob McCarthy has created a particularly sharp and incisive medical thriller in The Hollow Men. As the first in a series, it will be exciting to see how Harry Kent develops over time as he engages in the medical, law enforcement, and social circles of London.
QUOTED: "let’s make room for Dr. Kent because, though he occasionally gets himself bogged down in the specifics of his profession (the saving Solomon's life is in exhaustive detail), author Rob McCarthy—who is a medical student in his fourth year—keeps it, for the most part, readable to the layman."
"well worth your time."
MON
JAN 2 2017 1:00PM
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FRESH MEAT
Review: The Hollow Men by Rob McCarthy
DAVID CRANMER
The Hollow Men by Rob McCarthy follows police surgeon Harry Kent, who's determined to help those the world would rather brush aside, in a smart and electrifying new crime series that evokes the often-hidden medical world of the London Metropolitan Police.
Dr. Harry Kent has been performing low-risk functions such as psychological assessments for the London Metropolitan Police that have kept him far from harm’s way—up until now. Called in because the police are shorthanded, he finds himself being given a Kevlar vest and asked to walk past a perimeter of snipers to negotiate with Solomon Idris, who has taken eight people hostage at a fast food restaurant. He's understandably nervous as he makes a mental comparison with his combat past.
A familiar feeling was coming back to him, one that he hadn't missed. But it had been different when he'd been in the field—he'd been a cog in a machine, whether in the safety of the hospital at Bastion, behind dozens of security circles, or darting out of the back ramp of a helicopter with a platoon of Royal Marines to take the heat for him. There, he'd had a mission, something he could focus on to ignore the flying bullets. The kid in front of him with three limbs blown off and half of his circulating volume soaked into the dust.
Here, though, it was just him and a seventeen-year-old boy with a gun. The one who was really in charge of the situation, whatever the Met said.
A tension-filled, on-the-scene checkup of Solomon reveals the young man is close to respiratory failure. He urges Solomon to follow him to a hospital, but the desperate man is only interested in a lawyer and talking to the BBC. He cryptically mentions the name Keisha and that “they” had killed her. Before the good doctor can learn any more details, one of the “trigger-happy pricks,” as Harry coins them, takes down Solomon, ending the standoff but leaving the mystery of what the hostage situation was all about unresolved.
In the critical care ward, Solomon's life ends up in danger again, and Harry's investigation puts him at odds with an old colleague and thugs who play hardball.
The first punch came straight into the side of his face, sending him staggering towards the front door of his apartment block. The next blow, a kick to the soft of his abdomen, put him down. Hands on his hand, going for the phone. Harry let it go. The deliveryman grasped the phone with his leather glove, and stepped over him. He relaxed his muscles, waiting for another blow, but it didn't come. He arched his back, scrabbled backwards across the ice-covered tarmac.
We are living through an era of CSI and medical narrative glut. TV shows and books alike are swimming in a sea of stories mired in laborious scientific techniques and analysis. What had once been an exciting new direction in crime fiction a couple of decades ago is now tedious to the point of longing for “where have you gone Quincy and Dixie McCall?” simpler times. That being lamented, let’s make room for Dr. Kent because, though he occasionally gets himself bogged down in the specifics of his profession (the saving Solomon's life is in exhaustive detail), author Rob McCarthy—who is a medical student in his fourth year—keeps it, for the most part, readable to the layman.
A first in a series that is well worth your time, and I'm very much looking forward to the return of Dr. Harry Kent.
QUOTED: "Written with admirable verve and lacerating detail, it announces the arrival of a shiny new talent in British crime writing and grips from the start."
CRIME
By Geoffrey Wansell for the Daily Mail
PUBLISHED: 16:58 EDT, 25 February 2016 | UPDATED: 07:46 EDT, 29 February 2016
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This ferocious debut from a young medical student is one of the finest first crime novels I have encountered this year +4
This ferocious debut from a young medical student is one of the finest first crime novels I have encountered this year
THE HOLLOW MEN by Rob McCarthy +4
THE HOLLOW MEN by Rob McCarthy
THE HOLLOW MEN
by Rob McCarthy
(Mulholland £14.99)
This ferocious debut from a young medical student is one of the finest first crime novels I have encountered this year.
Its protagonist, police surgeon Dr Harry Kent, who works in the intensive care unit of a London hospital and depends on amphetamines to get him through, is a character of whom we are going to hear a great deal — TV rights have already been optioned. It’s Holby City meets Happy Valley.
A medic who served in Afghanistan, Kent is pitched into a police hostage incident in a fast food shop, which ends when armed police shoot the disturbed teenage hostage-taker he has been sent in to examine — a young black boy named Solomon Idris.
The scene shifts to the ICU, where Kent again saves Idris when he has a devastating allergic reaction to some of the drugs that have been wrongly administered to him. Kent realises that somewhere in the medical fraternity lurks a killer.
Written with admirable verve and lacerating detail, it announces the arrival of a shiny new talent in British crime writing and grips from the start.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-3464616/CRIME.html#ixzz4gnDcnZcb
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QUOTED: "In these days of whistleblowers in the media, Rob McCarthy’s latest tale ... seems well timed."
A Handful of Ashes by Rob McCarthy
Browser review
Claire Looby
Sat, Apr 1, 2017, 06:00
First published:
Sat, Apr 1, 2017, 06:00
In these days of whistleblowers in the media, Rob McCarthy’s latest tale in the Dr Harry Kent series seems well timed. Set in London, it hovers between medical and crime drama. Susan Bayliss, a young surgeon in a leading children’s hospital, accuses a high-profile colleague of negligence in a series of children’s deaths. She is suspended as a troublemaker but won’t be deterred from her claims. Then her body is discovered, after an apparent suicide. When he is drafted into the case, Kent, the damaged doctor-cum-medical examiner with the Metropolitan Police, questions whether Bayliss’s suicide was in fact a murder. The investigation gives Kent opportunities to relive old, destructive experiences. Forced to work with an old flame, taking a too-close look at the practices of fellow doctors, he is driven by his precarious lifestyle more and more towards dependence on prescription drugs and bouts of self-reproach. But, like Bayliss, he won’t quit until some, if not all, of the truth is out.
Sat, Apr 1, 2017, 06:00
QUOTED: "His detailed background knowledge positively leaps off every page, from the efforts the hospital teams make to bring someone back to life to a gut-churning description of an emergency open heart procedure being performed with minimal equipment on someone’s living room floor."
"McCarthy combines police work and medical detail into a seamless whole that drags the reader through the story at an ever-increasing pace."
A Handful of Ashes
by Rob McCarthy
When a notorious whistleblower is found dead, she appears to have taken her own life, but force medical examiner Dr Harry Kent isn’t convinced things are as straightforward as that.
Review
Dr Harry Kent works as a force medical examiner for the Metropolitan police, which means he gets called on at all hours to attend the police station if a medical opinion is needed. On top of this, he puts in long and gruelling shifts in A&E, and is also doing his best to track down information about a young woman who was attacked during the London riots and left in a coma.
Harry’s already over-burdened life gets worse when he’s called out by the police to the scene of an apparent suicide. The dead woman is sitting in a chair in the middle of her flat, deep wounds in her arms and blood pooling around her on the floor. Something about the scene strikes Harry as not being quite right, but he’s distracted by the presence of the senior investigating officer, acting DCI Frances Noble, who also has the dubious distinction of being Harry’s ex-girlfriend. They split up when Harry could no longer cope with her addiction to alcohol, but the tables have turned now as Frankie Noble has been dry for the past six months, whereas Harry is now mainlining amphetamines to get him through the day.
Matters become more complicated when it is revealed that the dead woman, Susan Bayliss, a registrar in cardiothoracic surgery, had been suspended from her job at the Belgrave Hospital for children after blowing the whistle on her boss, a top heart surgeon. She had accused him of being reckless in a series of high-profile operations on young children who subsequently and inexplicably died following surgery. As a result of her accusations, Bayliss ended up being suspended from her job, and it seems likely that the stress of the investigation, coupled with the hospital administration’s attempts to discredit her testimony by calling her mental health into question, led to her inability to cope.
The surgeon, Elyas Mohamed, vigorously denies any malpractice, as does the hospital administration, but Harry is convinced that Bayliss’ death is inextricably linked to the cases of the dead children and, against his better judgment, he ends up getting sucked into another of Frankie Noble’s investigations.
Rob McCarthy is a pseudonym for a London medical student, and his detailed background knowledge positively leaps off every page, from the efforts the hospital teams make to bring someone back to life to a gut-churning description of an emergency open heart procedure being performed with minimal equipment on someone’s living room floor after an unexpected attack on a police officer. If Casualty and Holby City are your cup of tea, then this is the series for you. McCarthy combines police work and medical detail into a seamless whole that drags the reader through the story at an ever-increasing pace.
Harry’s dealings with Frankie Noble are as prickly as barbed wire, but his inability to stay away when she calls isn’t going down well with Harry’s long-suffering girlfriend, Beth, who is constantly playing second-fiddle to her boyfriend’s various obsessions. When Beth discovers the true extent of Harry’s addiction, she’s desperate for him to make the effort to get clean, and so is Harry – in theory. But the practice proves very different. Harry’s downward addictive spiral makes for hard but compulsive reading, with Frankie’s success in staying off the bottle throwing the contrast between them into even more painful relief.
As a shameless follower of Holby City addict, and a long-time fan of Casualty (I even remember the days when Charlie Fairhead was a youngster!), I am happy to confess to being hooked by McCarthy’s Harry Kent series. The books are sharply observed, cleverly plotted and very definitely addictive.
Reviewed 14 April 2017 by Linda Wilson