Harvest

SUMMARY: When Robin Cook wrote Coma in 1977, the idea of hospital patients being incubated for their vital organs sounded like science fiction. Twenty years later, this gripping thriller about a thriving international black market in human hearts, livers and kidneys could come from tomorrow's "Nightline." Author Gerritsen was an internist before she switched her energies to writing, and her experience shows in every scene. When young surgical resident Dr. Abby DiMatteo assists at her first "harvest" (the removal of living organs from a patient declared legally brain dead) at Boston's posh Bayside Hospital, "she felt vaguely nauseated by the whine of the blade, the smell of bone dust," neither of which seem to bother the veterans. It's obviously a personal memory being mined for good fictional purposes. (Gerritsen wrote paperback romance novels before Harvest: Check out her Keeper of the Bride and Thief of Hearts.) A debut medical thriller in which a young surgeon is invited to join an elite heart transplant team, and sees it as an opportunity to finally make up for her own brother's tragic death. But she soon discovers how far the team are prepared to go to maintain their record of success, and finds her own life at risk. Abby DiMatteo's childhood vow to become a surgeon, following the death of her brother in a coma, is fulfilled when she joins an elite heart transplant team at Bayside Hospital. But miracles always have their price, and soon Abby is fighting for her principles against a deadly conspiracy.