Dr. Knox Paperback – July 11, 2017

Dr. Adam Knox is a doctor to the down-and-out in central LA and to cash paying criminals and other outsiders in LA. He works out of an old warehouse in the gritty part of downtown, with a crew of dedicated, if slightly sour assistants. Knox was raised in CT where he started his medical practice but moved to LA after some Doctors-without-Borders gigs and getting a divorce from his beautiful but shallow wife. Knox has a side-kick, Ben Sutton, who is his muscle and omnipresent protector, a trope of this genre (think Patrick Kinzie's Bubba or Spencer's Hawk). Spiegelman takes Sutton farther than usual in making him a handsome, leanly muscled, ex-special forces / mercenary type, single, very smart and with a great Manhattan Beach condo and always driving a hot car obtained through some shady deal. But Spiegelman takes Sutton too close to being a flawless super-hero. The plot is built on a young eastern European woman, Elena, who drops off an injured 6 year old boy (Alex) at Knox’ clinic and then disappears. As Knox tries to find her to keep Alex out of the hands of the DCFS, he discovers that she and Alex are also being pursued by a Russian mob led by "Siggy. The very violent Siggy wants her because he’s a human trafficker and his organization brought her to LA to turn tricks and he she is missing property. Also, the huge private Bray Corporation wants the boy for some reason that’s part of the mystery. To keep the plot moving, Knox and Sutton go on medical calls to wounded criminals and Sutton invariably kicks ass when things get rough. Despite leaning heavily on some genre clichés and resolving the mystery in a not-especially clever way, Dr. Knox is very readable and entertaining and Knox himself is an interesting and well-developed protagonist.

Contemporary Los Angeles is the setting for this first-rate crime/action novel about a physician committed to serving the people on the lowest rungs of the world's social structures, but conflicted about how to balance out immediate specific needs and "the greater good". Dr. Adam Knox operates a small open clinic on LA's skid row, treating the homeless, the very poor, addicts, prostitutes, etc. One day, a hysterical woman with a stricken child walks in and brings violent baggage into the lives of the clinic's staff, most especially that of Dr. Knox. The woman's terrible problems AND the little boy that she abandons at the clinic transfer to the doctor's shoulders, and how to deal with them becomes the main story line for the rest of the novel.Everyone that Dr. Knox loves and respects makes it clear that he is endangering them, his clinic and his future in pursuit of assistance to the fugitive woman and her abandoned child--his conflict grows as his moral compass spins.This is a fine read, with elements that remind you (very favorably) of Robert Crais' LA-based Elvis Cole/Joe Pike adventures. Recommended.

A full-page ad in the New York Times Book Review section offered this Kindle book at $1.99 for one week only. “The heart-pounding, pulse-racing start of a new crime series.” What the heck. I downloaded it.At first I thought it was a novelization of a treatment for a television series, but it had way too many uses of the f-word, even for cable. Reading up on the author, I discovered that no, he really was a novelist. Okay. But it does read a little like the pilot for a television series, and who knows, maybe it will turn out to be one, maybe on TNT like “Bones.”Dr. Adam Knox runs a free clinic in a run-down Los Angeles neighborhood by day. By night he goes around with a man named Sutter doing house calls in situations where no questions are asked, no information given, and no names are used – and large quantities of cash are exchanged. This nighttime second job pays the rent on the clinic.But then one afternoon at the clinic he treats a five-year-old boy having a severe allergic reaction to peanuts. His mother, Elena, disappears out a bathroom window when some thugs appear at the door. (I have rarely seen a window in a public bathroom, but in TV-land every bathroom has one that someone uses to make an escape.) Dr. Knox doesn’t want to turn the child over to DFS, despite the urging of his nurse, Lydia. Thus the stage is set for the “heart-pounding, pulse-racing” part of the novel.I don’t know if my heart pounded or my pulse raced, but Dr. Knox ends up putting everything on the line – his life, his employees’ and friends’ lives, his clinic – for one five-year-old boy and his mother. He finds himself up against a super-wealthy family that owns an industrial conglomerate that controls all sorts of people and businesses and governments. I had to wonder why Dr. Knox persisted in the face of such a fierce onslaught, but of course he did, because he’s a good guy and is going to have his own television series one of these days.In the end, of course, all is made right, and Dr. Knox triumphs. The book did engage me after I got a few chapters into it, and I found myself reading later into the night to see what would happen. So that was good. The author obviously knows Los Angeles well (I don’t), because he describes what different neighborhoods and streets are like, where gentrification is happening and where it’s not, etc. Great literature it isn’t. But the author is going to make a pile of money, $1.99 Kindle book offers notwithstanding, when this is sold for a television series. I might even watch it once in awhile.

Spiegelman's Dr. Knox is a well-paced thriller, which centers on difficult moral choices for its main character. When a woman seemingly abandons her son at his skid row clinic, Knox is faced with the choice of reporting the boy to Child and Family Services or looking for his mother while keeping him safe despite the vehement objections of friends and co-workers. His decision to hide the boy puts Knox and his friends in danger from more than one source. The novel is full of ruthless villains, impossible financial situations, and compromises. It offers lots of danger, action, and philosophical dilemmas. Tough guy character, Sutton ( kind of a Hawk from the Robert B. Parker Spencer books or Joe Pike from Robert Crais series) is irresistible, if standard for the genre. Although some of the dialogue seems a bit unrealistic (Elena's varying level of English is a little hard to buy, even with the subtle explanation) and some of the bad guys are a tinge too stock, Dr. Knox is an exciting read,that had me rooting for the good guys and wondering how in heaven they were going to get out of the mess they'd gotten into.

Really liked the way how Spiegelman describes and paints the characters. Intense story, good read.