The shocking story of Dr. Michael Swango, who, despite being a convicted felon suspected of murdering dozens of his patients, was allowed to practice medicine. Best-selling author Stewart (Den of Thieves, 1991, etc.) brings us inside the life of a killer who thrived in a medical establishment where doctors typically cover up for other doctors, where hospital administrators live in constant fear of litigation, and where regulatory agencies don’t share crucial information. At Southern Illinois University’s medical school, Swango kept to himself, but classmates noticed that patients who came into contact with him tended to die. After graduating, Swango got a prestigious medical internship at Ohio State University. In February 1984 at Ohio State, patient Ruth Barrick died immediately after Swango treated her. Later a nurse saw Swango injecting a patient with a syringe; the patient almost died. The nurse who accused Swango was ignored and, in a pattern that would repeatedly benefit Swango, other doctors circled the wagons to defend their colleague. As more patients died, Ohio State initiated an in-house investigation, led by a fellow doctor, that fully exonerated Swango. Hospital administrators refused to even reprimand him, because they “didn’t want to be sued by Swango as a result of unfounded charges and nurses’ gossip.” When his internship was up, Swango worked as a paramedic in his hometown of Quincy, Ill. He related fantasies to his co-workers about killing people. When Swango brought in donuts, his co-workers got sick. After a few more poisonings, Swango was arrested and convicted. A felon, he nonetheless went on to practice medicine in South Dakota, New York, and Africa. In each place, patients died mysteriously under Swango’s care. Finally, upon his return from Africa, the FBI arrested the young doctor for falsifying medical records. He’s currently in prison, but could be released within three years. Although Stewart writes skillfully about the medical establishment’s unforgivable “code of silence,” he never quite succeeds in taking us very far into Swango’s warped mind. Thus, we—re left to guess about his psychotic motives and thought processes.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-85484-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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