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Joshua Spanogle is currently a student at Stanford Medical School, but he has already acquired quite a bit of backstory. A Yale graduate, Spanogle has also served as a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. As if medical school wasn't time-consuming enough, Spanogle has written a medical thriller, ISOLATION WARD, that infuses elements of medical acumen and detective work to result in one of the more memorable books of recent note in any genre.
Spanogle's creation is Dr. Nathaniel McCormick, an officer of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, which in turn is a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The title "officer" connotes hierarchy and bureaucracy, and McCormick does not play well with others. Additionally, his personality is closer to that of Gregory House than Marcus Welby. These traits do not mesh well with his supervisors in the CDC, the hospitals he visits, law enforcement…well, you get the idea. This guy has an authority problem. And what makes it additionally tough for his superiors is that McCormick, more often than not, is right.
When a number of people begin showing up at a Baltimore Hospital emergency room with extremely nasty symptoms, McCormick --- loose cannon that he is --- goes rolling across the deck and over a number of toes. It doesn't take long to figure out that the patients are all residents of group homes. McCormick himself notes that he doesn't like being stuck in examining rooms --- an interesting attitude for a physician --- and is soon out in the streets and neighborhoods of Baltimore, investigating the patients, their employers and their friends, and kicking over rocks in the best manner of Robert B. Parker's Spenser and Raymond Chandler's Marlowe.
When an individual with a link to all the patients is found brutally murdered, McCormick's unauthorized investigation takes him to Northern California, where he not only uncovers the bizarre and frightening etiology of the mystery disease, but is also forced to confront and resolve issues from his own past that have a bearing on his present.
Spanogle has created a unique character here; McCormick is slightly irritating yet ultimately likable, and there is no question that he is an irresistible force attracted toward the truth. Considering that medical research and detective work are quite similar, it is somewhat surprising that characters such as McCormick are not more common in fiction. Spanogle, with McCormick and ISOLATION WARD, has raised the bar for future creators his first time out. Recommended.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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