Two mysteries plague Dr. Ephraim Carroll, the Philadelphia-physician protagonist of Lawrence Goldstone’s THE ANATOMY OF DECEPTION: the disappearance of a woman who needed to have a problem “fixed” and the death of a fellow doctor with an underground reputation as somewhat of a “fixer.”

In 1889, Carroll has given up private practice to study under Dr. William Osler – one of the real people in this historical thriller – and watches him perform autopsies in a cold brick building known as The Dead House. One evening, the rather solitary Carroll is invited out for a night on the town by fellow doc Turk. It’s a summons Carroll soon will regret accepting.

The evening in question includes a good steak, greater champagne and – great gosh a’mighty – women of questionable morals. But the irksome point arrives when Turk is suddenly involved in a quarrel with a strange man, and Turk instantly puts an end to the reverie.

As much as Carroll would like to know what the scuffle is all about, Turk pulls a disappearing act at the university. Amateur sleuthing on Carroll’s behalf, however, turns him up at a local inn, on death’s door, suffering from what looks like a particularly nasty bout of cholera (just check out his chamber pots). But how’d he acquire the disease?

Meanwhile, Osler’s on his way up the career ladder to a position in Baltimore, and he asks Carroll to join him. Another request is posed of Carroll as well – this one concerning a young woman gone missing. Her parents think she’s merely out of the country, but friends fear she may be on the receiving end of a botched back-alley abortion.

And so begins a double-edged detective story with no true detective. Having the doctors do the dirty work is the freshness of this novel, with many of the clues to both conundrums determined via cadaver dissection. As “in” as forensics is nowadays, ANATOMY strips it down to its origins, predating rubber gloves, and Goldstone’s descriptions of the procedures appear technically sound.

Sex and drugs figure plenty in this turn-of-the-century tale – one told with just a bit too many pages. Readers may find its elongated setup wearisome, since a third of the book has passed before the plot finds its true starting point – and thus, ANATOMY, its spark. The pace picks up greatly from there and deepens until the slightly obvious end. –Rod Lott

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