Dr. Peter Brown is an intern at Manhattan Catholic, what some would call the city's worst hospital. He's cynical, critical, comical and one tough guy. He's big, not so good looking (in his own words) and he used to be a mafia hit man. He went into witness protection, got a new identity which explains why he's a half dozen years older than most of his contemporaries.
His hours are long, but drugs help, so does attitude. One day he has to tell someone about his cancer and it turns out to be Nicholas LoBrutto, aka Eddy Squillante, someone from his mafia days. At first LoBrutto thinks Doc Brown has come to kill him, because the good doctor has an AKA as well, he's AKA Pietro Brnwa and he is also known as "Bearclaw." It doesn't take long for LoBrutto to start the squeeze on Peter. Either Peter saves him or he turns him over to the mob. As long as LoBrutto lives, Peter is safe. And thus begins the zaniest thriller I've read. A lot of the book has Brown flashbacking to how his life got to this point. He came home to find his grandparents dead at age 14. His grandparents raised him when his own hippi parents were too caught up in living their own lives to raise a child. After their death he befriends a guy named Skinflick who is known to be the son of a mafia lawyer. At 18 he is given his first kill by Skinflicks father - the 2 brothers who killed his grandparents to get made by the mob. So over the next several years his reputation grows as he kills with a vengence and a blood tenacity.
But when he is sent to help Skinflick kill a father and his sons that are running a sex trade worker farm - he gets fingered as the main killer and goes to court. Here is where we find out how he got his nickname Bearclaw which is much more anticlimatic than I thought it would be. After Brown is aquited he finds himself thrown into a shark tank at the local aquarium trying to keep his girlfriend alive. When she gets knocked off he decides to flip on the mob and gets put into witness protection.
I won't give anything away but I have to say the final 2 chapters were brutal - I almost threw up during some of the descriptions of Brown performing surgery on himself! Plus I'll never look at a aquarium in quite the same way again. I listened to it on CD as I couldn't get past the first chapter when I was reading it. The flashbacks are mixed in and it was hard for me to follow where as I could just listen and I could just follow along.
This book was kind of crazy and fascinating at the same time. If you don't like violence, fowl language or sex then do not read this book as it has all of that plus much more. One of the reviews describes this book as a cross between House and Sopranos and that pretty much sums it up.