‘Dispense with death (Kindle edition)’, by Peter Mulholland. Pp 139. Price £0.77; paperback £4.99. Amazon.co.uk; 2013. ASIN B00CFQUCD
Male pharmacists in fiction tend to be sad, cynical or sinister middle-aged men bogged down unhappily in community practice. So when I started reading this pharmacist-written novel I thought that maybe here would be a story that portrayed pharmacists in a better light. Initially it seems that a young hospital pharmacist is being set up as the hero of the tale. Alas, he turns out to be far from heroic.
At times the narrative is hard work. It does not help that the text frequently lurches in a fresh direction without any clear indication that the unnamed subject of a new paragraph is not the same person as in the previous paragraph. The novel offers little in the way of character development, and its abrupt conclusion left this reader with more questions than answers.
Perhaps the dire cover photograph was an omen. The book suffers from the sloppy punctuation and inconsistent presentation that seem to characterise self-published works. Sadly, it also features some pharmaceutical errors. For example, a drug company asked to analyse a suspected faulty injection would surely not assay the active ingredient without also looking for contaminants. And a white powder could not be stramonium, which is a dried and powdered herb.
Does this e-book offer value for money? Since its 38,000 words cost less than a pound, it is hard to claim otherwise. But it could have been so much better.
Andrew Haynes is former deputy editor of The Pharmaceutical Journal.
Source:
http://www.pjonline.com/news/%E2%80%98dispense_with_death_kindle_edition_book_review