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Jed Mercurio trained at the University of Birmingham Medical School and worked at various hospitals in the West Midlands. He wrote the highly acclaimed television drama Cardiac Arrest (under the pseudonym of John Macure). Bodies is his first novel.
Often with novels produced by TV writers (Mercurio wrote the excellent drama Cardiac Arrest) we end up with something more like a screenplay - all dialogue and direction, and no descriptive power. This is a magnificent rejoinder to that. Mercurio (a former doctor himself) brilliantly captures the early nerves and eagerness of a young doctor, and slowly we watch him degenerate into bitterness, cynicism, exploitative sex and an extra-curricular dabble with prescription drugs. No single step in our doctor's walk into the darkness is hugely dramatic. There are deaths, but they are from mistakes and arrogance; our one move towards something more sinister is quickly extinguished. Relationships fizzle and die, and even the defining affair with a nurse is unsatisfactory, hurried and immoral. Bitterness and despair seep through the novel like blood through bandages, but the sheer pace and energy drag you along, forcing you to empathise with an often unsympathetic character, but one who, finally, drags himself back from the abyss in order to take the morally correct decisions - which is all we can ask of our medical profession. True to life, doing the right thing isn't the easy thing, nor does it correct the wrongs, but it gives the whole novel a backbone, and our character a chance at a Final Judgement of his own, after watching so many others play God. Mercurio is a talent to watch - his handling of the material is assured, his use of footnotes to explain medical jargon is informative and sometimes mocking, and his knowledge of the medical profession both impressive and chilling. A major new voice in modern fiction. (Kirkus UK)
