From the first pages of A. Scott Pearson's debut novel, Rupture, readers are taken on a high speed chase. Though the ride may not be literal, it is certainly full of the same thrills and action. Rupture is a medical thriller that introduces brilliant Eli Branch, MD who has just been hired as a rising rockstar surgeon/researcher at a prestigious medical facility in Memphis. In less than an hour on the job, Dr. Branch finds his surgical position in jeopardy and his dreams of stem cell research circling the drain. A couple of days later, he's a major suspect in a murder and finds his past and maybe his future intertwined with a global medical giant. Joining his quest to clear his name and uncover the mystery he seems to be neck deep in is Meg Daily, a pathologist at the hospital and a former medical examiner.

The plot is complex but told in a crisp Hemingway style, with enough false clues to get your brain spinning in other directions. When the truths are finally revealed, they made me drop my jaw—but also made me slap my forehead because Pearson had indeed paved the way for those conclusions. The characterizations also are very human and well drawn. And, of course, the science and ethical issues in this novel are intriguing and could have been taken from today's headlines.

Yet the quality that I found so refreshing about this work is the naturalness of all of the medical procedures, which came across just as matter-of-factly as if you were looking over the shoulder of your local mechanic and he was explaining what he was doing to your carburetor. The author comes by that ease with trauma and surgery honestly. He himself has been a surgeon on the faculty at Vanderbilt University for the past ten years and is also a cancer researcher.

As I closed the pages of Rupture, I hoped to see more books by A. Scott Pearson, and perhaps more with Dr. Eli Branch, who is a most human and quick-witted surgeon.