Review – Cardiac Event

Medical Suspense with Heart is author Dr. Richard Mabry’s tag line and with each book of his I read, I come to realize more and more that this is a perfect tag line for his stories. No one writes medical suspense better than a medical professional, and as a doctor, Mabry includes details that I find so interesting because I know they are true. I am always impressed with the skills and knowledge a doctor must master to practice medicine, but Mabry’s books give me just a glimpse of the skills needed. Thanks to him, I have been able to now put doctors in my super hero category.

Of course, that’s not the only reason I like reading his books. I love how we get to see doctors’ and nurses’ hearts for their job. I’ve recently had a few hospital stays, and the last one was over a holiday weekend. I saw six doctors that weekend, and I have to say not all of them had the same compassion and heart for the patient as Dr. Mabry’s main characters do. Dr. Kirk Martin in Cardiac Event is just such a doctor. He is compassionate and relatable. As he is accused of murdering another doctor, and we see his practice falling off because patients don’t want to be seen by a potential murderer, and he cries out to God, we can relate to his plight.

And then there’s the suspense. Mabry is always creative in his medical plots and this book has a very interesting method of murder so it’s no exception. I hated that Dr. Martin is at first blamed for the murder of his associate, and I found myself cheering for his innocence as the book progressed. And, of course, I loved reading along to figure out the real killer’s identity.