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Equity of Evil Reviewed By Gordon Osmond of Bookpleasures.com
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Gordon Osmond

Reviewer Gordon Osmond : Gordon is a produced and award-winning playwright and author of: So You Think You Know English--A Guide to English for Those Who Think They Don't Need One, Wet Firecrackers--The Unauthorized Autobiography of Gordon Osmond and his debut novel Slipping on Stardust.

He has reviewed books and stageplays for http://CurtainUp.com and for the Bertha Klausner International Literary Agency. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School and practiced law on Wall Street for many years before concentrating on writing fiction and non-fiction. You can find out more about Gordon by clicking HERE

Gordon can also be heard on the Electic Authors Showcase.







 
By Gordon Osmond
Published on April 19, 2012
 

Author:Rudy A. Mazzocchi

Publisher:Twilight Times Books


ASIN: B007H9QNQW(Kindle Edition)


Follow Here To Purchase Equity of Evil

Author:Rudy A. Mazzocchi

Publisher:Twilight Times Books

ASIN: B007H9QNQW(Kindle Edition)


Page 2: "Based on True Events"

Page 3: "This is a work of fiction. All concepts, characters and events portrayed in this book are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental."

Having read with both fascination and revulsion this generally grim and frequently gory tale of world-wide medical malpractice, I'd prefer to believe page three.

 

Equity of Evil is about how a basically decent and well intentioned venture capitalist with a strong background in matters medical gets sucked into an international cartel which preys upon women and their most vital parts, all in the cause of developing transplantable organs for impatient and wealthy recipients.

For this modern breed of body snatchers, abortion is just a benign beginning, sort of dead-child's play. Up to this point, our hero is willing to raise capital for mobile homes equipped to take both blood and babies from inconvenienced and impatient mothers-to-be. The story darkens considerably when overzealous surgeons start removing not only fetuses but also their temporary maternal housing units. The final plot thickener occurs when our hero's principal squeeze becomes a victim of this super surgery and barely escapes being disposed of as collateral damage/carnage.

Once the true, crimson character of the cartel becomes clear, the novel moves into a "kill the whistleblowers" mode ala Silkwood, The China Syndrome, and The Insider. To double down on the novel's conflicts, the stoolies are pursued not only by their former colleagues but also by state and federal fuzz. During this pursuit, bones are broken, letter openers are used to open more than letters, there's an explosive car-B-Q, and, true to the medical theme of the book, lethal drugs are injected into victims. At the end, the reader almost welcomes the appearance of good ol' firearms and the even less invasive Taser as means of disablement.

The moral dilemma nicely posed by Equity of Evil is the ancient conundrum of ends versus means. Although the author has stated, admirably, that he has tried to steer a middle course between pro lifers and pro choicers, I very much doubt that you'll find this book on the waiting room tables of Planned Parenthood. PETA, on the other hand, could make some really gruesome posters out of any number of the book's more explicit episodes.

For the most part the story is efficiently told although at time the events and characters become a bit dispersive, particularly when the focus shifts from medical to legal matters. In a few cases, the author adds elaborative details to dialogue which, though helpful to the reader, render the dialogue itself somewhat false. "Transfer him to the small conference room next to my office" and "even Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis—Lou Gehrig’s disease." The addressees of these remarks could, and in the real world would, manage with less exposition.

As for matters of style, I would have preferred more of "sarcasm salting his words" and "the bullshit flowed from her sweet lips" and less of "his stare spoke volumes and "lit up like a Christmas tree." And although I acknowledge that there is nothing more difficult than to come up with fresh means of describing sexual foreplay—open mouths, welcoming tongues, and all that—the author's "letting his swollen groin speak his thoughts" seems to have somewhat missed the mark particularly for somewhat so obviously well grounded in anatomy.

At the end of what may well be the first in a series of books, the reunited couple seems to contemplate the possibility of asking the recently jilted Gal Friday to act as surrogate mother for the biological child of her boss and his recovered lover. Gal's reaction to such a proposal might well eclipse the violence of the immediately preceding scene, when the inevitable Mad Scientist gets pulled apart by murderous baboons.

There are other scenes in the book that are so graphic and violent as to make even Quentin Tarantino blush. On the other hand, in college, I fainted during a film of an absolutely normal childbirth, so what do I know?

As I read a pre-publication version of the book, I'm not going to comment on matters of punctuation except to say that in the book's present form, the author's effusive thanks to his editor are somewhat premature.


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