Bringing out the dead

Frank Pierce is a very good paramedic. He is also burned-out, reeling from his recent marriage break up and from the theatre of death he sees on every shift. His colleagues are as tired as he is, but while they are all bored, desensitised and robotic it is only Frank who sees the ghosts of those he did not or could not save. One such lost patient is Burke, whose spirit accompanies Frank throughout the novel, and who may just stop him from really cracking under the weight of the mayhem and death. This is a startlingly vivid novel of the life of a paramedic - the emergencies, the lives that are saved and those that are lost, the wise-cracking humour of the city streets and the casualty wards - and it is also a novel of redemption, written with haunting and powerful energy.