The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldstone

The Anatomy of Deception

by Lawrence Goldstone

This book is set in Philadelphia, in the year 1889. In the morgue of the city hospital, physicians uncover the corpse of a beautiful young woman. What they see takes their breath away. Within days, one of the surgeons, Ephraim Carroll, strongly suspects that he knows the woman's identity. His investigations take him from the bloody and brutal medical world in which he practices and into the drawing rooms of Philadelphia's high society where he soon learns that nothing - and no one - is what they seem. Plunged into a maze of deception and deadly secrets, Carroll is forced to choose between exposing a killer, undoing a terrible wrong, and, quite possibly, protecting the future of medicine itself. Set in a world in which pregnancy could result in agonising death, and doctors killed more patients than they cured, "The Anatomy of Deception" is an intriguing and richly atmospheric blend of history, early forensic science and knife-edge suspense.

Reviewed by Mystereity Reviews on

2 of 5 stars

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You know when a book starts off slow but you stick with it because you think it's going to pick up and have a really great ending? This was not one of them. The ending was so convoluted and inane that I want to hunt down the author and slap some sense into him. This book is compared to The Alienist, a book I thoroughly loved and frankly, the comparison is an insult to Caleb Carr.

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  • Started reading
  • 25 August, 2013: Finished reading
  • 25 August, 2013: Reviewed