Dead is Dead

Here's what I liked about this book:

Josh Bazell is a nerdy guy. He received a BA in English Literature from Brown University, and an MD from Columbia, and is now a medical resident in San Francisco. He's clearly bored with his job, bored with medicine as a profession, and thought to himself that maybe he should let his imagination run wild in the form of a book. What transpired was an exceedingly violent, mind-numbingly action-packed, pop fiction, sensational, senseless novel about the boring world of medicine. 

It's about a doctor who used to be in the mafia. His day starts by beating the shit out of some mugger, smashing his nose into his face like soft clay. Then he's seduced in an elevator. Many many people are murdered. A syringe filled with feces is injected into our hero's left buttock. He throws a man out of a six-story window. He goes down on a girl in a shark tank (after her brother has just been eaten). He rips a bone out of his own knee to brandish as a knife in a fight with a man he's already killed. You get the idea.

I liked it though. I don't know what else to say. Sometimes, you just need something ridiculous. Like a post-2002 (post-Adaptation) Nicolas Cage movie. Anyone? Knowing. Bangkok Dangerous. Next. Ghost Rider. National Treasure. They all go down nice and smooth. Just like Beat the Reaper.