Stigma

Los Angeles pediatrician turned novelist Philip Hawley Jr.'s debut novel — reminiscent of classic medical thrillers like Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and Robin Cook's Coma — is a subterfuge-laden page-turner that revolves around Luke McKenna, a pediatric E.R. physician and former secret member of a black ops unit of the Navy SEALS who vows to get to the bottom of an unidentifiable illness that killed a young Guatemalan boy. His investigation, however, only succeeds in putting his life and those of his loved ones in mortal danger.