The Cadaver's Ball
A Novel of Revenge
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
There are times when a trusted "friend" is so filled with hatred that he will do anything possible to ruin the other. Ed, Peter, and Beth had been friends through medical school. At the Cadaver's Ball, the somewhat ghoulish-named celebration that is the closest thing to a senior prom the hardworking medical students have, Ed confidently presents Beth with an engagement ring. She reluctantly has to tell him that she has already agreed to marry Peter---and Ed's life explodes.
From then on, Ed's main goal is to make Beth realize she made the wrong choice---but fate intervenes. A car crash takes her life and that of the baby she and Peter had been expecting. Peter was the one driving, and the accident comes close to wrecking his own life irretrievably.
Beth's death torches Ed's blazing hatred of Peter and he builds a complex and terrible program to destroy Peter. Peter doesn't suspect the cause of his growing difficulties until he becomes a suspect in the death of a patient. He must find a way to reclaim his life---if it is not already too late.
In this riveting psychological thriller, Charles Atkins demonstrates his rare skill for creating passionate characters with a range of motivations, from obsession and vengeance to self-preservation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weak characterizations and rampant implausibilities undermine this psychological thriller from Atkins (Risk Factor). Sociopathic medical student Ed Tyson vows revenge after Beth, a gorgeous fellow med student, spurns him for his academic rival, Peter Grainger, whom she marries. More than a decade later, Tyson is dean of NYU's med school and has gotten Grainger a teaching position at that institution, soon after the latter survives a car accident that claims Beth's life. Using Ann Walsh, an attractive, mentally fragile young student who resembles Beth, as a pawn, Tyson devises a sadistic scheme intended to convict Grainger of murder and worse. Ann just happens to be the estranged daughter of a burned-out writer who just happens to be the former lover of the female detective assigned to investigate the murder meant to be pinned on Grainger. Tyson's simplistic motivations and the absence of a closing twist make this a routine effort at best.
