Beat the Reaper is an entertaining comic action novel, narrated by a former hit man turned medical doctor. The quoted reviews on the cover capture the tone when they compare it to a Coen brothers movie.
The best thing about the book is the narrator's voice and his numerous interesting asides about matters both medical and criminal. For example: "'iatrogenic' (physician caused) and 'nosocomial' (hospital caused) illnesses... together are the eighth leading cause of death in the United States" and "Michael drops the gun after shooting the cop in The Godfather because the kid drops the gun after shooting the cop in Battle for Algiers." He never fails to be engaging, and the story moves along unpredictably.
On the other hand, I sometimes had a hard time suspending my disbelief. A hit man goes into Witness Protection and goes to medical school? (Was there time for that?) A protected witness against the mob moves back to New York? The chapters didn't always hang together. The hit man chapters and the hospital chapters felt like separate stories glued together roughly -- and that's not even counting the trip to Auschwitz.
So, in the end, Beat the Reaper was an enjoyable page-turner peppered with fun "facts" (which the author warns us not to trust), but you shouldn't expect too much realism.
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