If your reading tastes veer towards taut, gritty, nerve-wracking, testosterone-filled thrillers, then this should be the next novel for you. A contract killer for the mob who has entered the government witness protection program after betraying the secrets of his adoptive crime family now finds his own life along with his new career and hope for personal respectability in dire straits when his cover is blown. 

Even though Peter Brown, né Pietro Brnwa, was a highly efficient and remorseless killer for a New Jersey crime family, he still operated under his own code of ethics. Now he works to save lives after having obtained a medical degree thanks to the government after he entered the witness protection program. Never more of a change and and a chance for personal redemption than when he meets a young girl who exemplifies the innocence of youth. Their relationship is portrayed as an unexpectedly sweet and tender love story.

Peter Brown serves the indigent at a déclassé urban hospital where he hides out in plain site as a doctor of internal medicine since there is little chance of him running into any of his former associates. No self respecting mobster would be caught alive or dead at an institution like Manhattan Catholic. This allows Dr. Brown to attend to the needs of his patients where his keen intellect and highly skilled powers of observation allow him to analyze their medical problems better than anyone else in the wing.

While "Beat the Reaper" is certainly a tough, streetwise, expletive-laced tale, the author does not allow the frequent use of expletives to serve the purpose of dumbing down the story. Bazell, a medical doctor himself, has penned an intelligent story about the inner workings of a run-down urban hospital focusing on an overworked first year internist addicted to Moxfane and Dexedrine in order to stay alert and attentive to the needs of his patients. This book is filled with medically descriptive passages evidencing considerable research and professional knowledge on the part of the author.

At the very beginning of this book the skill that Peter Brown acquired during his former career becomes readily apparent when he is mugged late one night at the entrance to the hospital. The mugger thought that this doctor in scrubs would be just another easy mark, but Brown dispatches him with ruthless efficiency. Then, to show that he cares, he carries him into the hospital and drops him off at the emergency room.

The author describes in considerable detail Brown's rootless existence as the child of a hippie mother and absentee father who was raised by his grandparents in New Jersey. They were Polish Jews who had miraculously survived Auschwitz, but then insanity struck again when they were murdered in cold blood, apparently by young wannabe mobster punks looking to get "made." 

Peter Brown was then only 14 years old, and the insurance settlement allowed him to attend a private military school where he befriended a fellow student by the name of Adam Locano. Peter and Adam, universally known as "Skinflick," formed an unlikely friendship, and Skinflick even brought him home during the holidays. His parents readily befriended their son's orphaned classmate and often invited him to come along on their vacation travels. 

It wasn't until later that Brown figured out that Adam's father, a well to do lawyer at a small Wall Street firm, served as the legal representative for the New Jersey crime syndicate. Peter could have walked from his friendship with Skinflick after he figured this out, but his desire to avenge the death of his grandparents along with having an actual family who cared for him, drew him into the orbit of criminality until it was too late to do anything else. Besides, the short but strapping Brown ended up being very, very good at his new profession.

Years later after he has tried to escape his ugly and sordid past, the unexpected happens and his cover of anonymity is blown. Always careful of Italian patients who might have checked in, he is only marginally concerned when he is assigned to check in on a new patient with the name of Nicholas LoBrutto. To his shock and amazement, the two men instantly recognize each other, for LoBrutto's real name is Eddy Squillante and he is a low ranking member of the mob. 

Squillante is convinced that Peter "Bearclaw" Brown has been sent there to kill him, so he rats him out to another mobster. Now Brown knows that his former associates will quickly be after him to collect the huge bounty on his head for having betrayed mob secrets. He has just hours to plan a disappearance from everything and everyone he has grown to care for. 

The story evidences the corrosive effects of a desire for revenge as it sweeps across generations to capture many lives in its rapacious grip while destroying others caught in its path. While I found the resolution to be highly improbable, the rest of the story is spot on. 2009, Little Brown and Company.