Publisher's Weekly
Setting her story in the fictional Royal Eastern Hospital in London, Britain's popular medical journalist Rayner ( Maddie ) addresses such current British public health issues, as Thatcherite cuts in funding for the National Health Service, union resentment, abortion and AIDS. Although the characters are too broadly drawn, this hefty novel is fast-paced. Forceful 35-year-old surgeon Kate Sayers is involved in unwelcome publicity provoked by an angry prospective patient who believes that Kate has delayed his much-needed operation in favor of effecting a transsexual's (frivolous) sex change. A journalistic investigation discloses that a homosexual has been denied surgery on unsubstantiated suspicion of AIDS; that material from an aborted, almost fully developed fetus has been used to treat a victim of Parkinson's disease; and that four beds in the overcrowded wards have been vacated to accommodate the Minister of Health, whose department threatens to close down the hospital. Rayner affords us a glimpse into the heart of a British hospital, but neither offers a fresh view of the problems she raises nor makes us care very much about her characters.