Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt Stop #12

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO JOINED US ON THIS HUNT!

WINNERS OF THE BRITISH TEA AND ENCHANTED ISLE SET ARE KELLY H, LINDA H, & ANNETTE R.

Welcome to the Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt! If you’ve just discovered the hunt, be sure to start at Stop #1, and collect the clues through all 25 stops, in order, so you can enter to win one of our top 3 grand prizes!

• The hunt BEGINS with Stop #1 at Lisa Bergren’s site.
• Hunt through our loop using Chrome or Firefox as your browser (not Explorer).
• There is no rush to complete the hunt—you have all weekend (until Sunday, 10/22 at midnight MST)! So take your time, reading the unique posts along the way; our hope is that you discover new authors/new books.
• Submit your entry for the grand prizes by collecting the clue on each author’s scavenger hunt post and submitting your answer in the Rafflecopter form at Stop #25. Many authors are offering additional prizes along the way.

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Doc Mabry

It’s my honor to introduce Richard Mabry, a retired physician and novelist of heart-pounding (on multiple levels!) medical mysteries. Here’s a bit more about his latest book, Cardiac Event:

Cardiologist Dr. Kirk Martin continually crosses swords with Dr. Cliff Hamilton, so he is surprised when Hamilton asks him to care for him after a heart attack. When he is ready for discharge, Hamilton is found dead in his hospital bed, and Martin is suspected of murdering him.  After another doctor is found shot to death, Martin’s girlfriend, nurse Janet Rush, reminds him to be careful because he may be next. Can he save his own life while searching for the identity of the real murderer?

CHOOSING A DOCTOR…FOR THE NOVEL

by Richard Mabry

Everyone who reads my medical mysteries and sees that I’m an MD assumes I have an easy time with all the medical material I put in each book. But I was an otolaryngologist (that’s “ear, nose, and throat specialist” if you don’t like long words), and rarely, if ever, does a doctor of that type encounter situations that might hold the attention of a novel’s reader. Oh, I stopped quite a few nosebleeds in my day, and I suppose if they’d gone on long enough the patient might have gotten in trouble, but most such cases weren’t likely to keep a reader turning the pages of a book to read about them.

I’ve tried to do two things in my medical novels, in addition to holding the attention of the reader. First, I try never to introduce a technical term or procedure without making it clear to the reader what was going on. And second, I researched every aspect of medicine so that what I presented was both accurate and up-to-the-minute. If I didn’t, I can tell you from experience that someone would call me on it.

In order to set up interesting scenarios, I have made the doctors I feature in my novels family practitioners, emergency room doctors, and general surgeons—the kind of physicians who might encounter situations that hold the reader’s attention. When I started to write my latest novel, Cardiac Event, I decided to make the protagonist a heart specialist who included interventional procedures in his practice. In other words, he did cardiac catheterization, balloon angioplasty, stent placement, and in so doing, he literally had the power of life and death over the patient who lay on the table. Interesting, but I certainly knew only a bit more than many laymen do about that specialty. So why did I choose a heart doctor as my protagonist?

The idea began, as most novels do, with my asking myself, “What if?” Doctors sometimes get cross-wise with each other, and that enmity can go on for a prolonged period. What might happen if one of these doctors was called on to minister to the other in a medical situation? Was there a scenario where the treating doctor could easily let the other one die, and not be blamed for it? There was—inserting a catheter through a vein in the groin, threading it up to the beating heart, and dealing with an obstruction. So I had a specialty for my protagonist. But that didn’t seem like enough to carry through for a novel.

Taking it a step further, what if the second physician did well—i.e., the treating doctor overcame his temptation to let him die—and then was killed? Would the police suspect him, and were there other suspects as well? I filled in the holes, added some other characters, and Cardiac Event came about.

So that’s how Dr. Kirk Martin, a cardiologist, was called upon to care for Dr. Cliff Hamilton, an internal medicine specialist who liked to exceed his privileges, when Hamilton had a heart attack. What came next? I’m afraid you’ll have to check out the book to see. When you do, I hope you enjoy it.

RICHARD MABRY is a retired physician, author of “medical mysteries with heart.” He is the author of one non-fiction book (The Tender Scar: Life After The Death Of A Spouse), three novellas, and eleven published novels, the latest of which is Cardiac Event. Learn more at his website and blog, as well as Facebook.

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Here’s the Stop #12 Skinny:

• You can order Richard’s book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore!
• Clue to Write Down: and books
• Link to Stop #13, the Next Stop on the Loop: Richard Mabry’s site!

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Before you head off, I’m also giving away three Taylors English tea and Enchanted Isle novel sets for readers who sign up for my quarterly e-newsletter. If you’d like to be part of this giveaway and receive my newsletter, please submit your info below. I will be drawing three names on October 23rd.

Thanks for joining me! Enjoy your hunt…