Review: Riveting novel about a situation/condition still not totally eradicated.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 19, 2013
Cry of the NEEDLE, ISBN 9780951899854, Paradous Books, e-book, First Steps Publishing by Roger Radford is a thrilling but somewhat poignant novel dealing with a problem that in many ways has not disappeared.With the end of `the troubles' Kiernan Kelly, a killer of seven men as enforcer for the IRA's Internal Affairs, has left his native Belfast to escape repercussions and moved with his wife and three children to London. His wife, for the first time in four deliveries, has been persuaded to have a spinal injection to `lessen the pain of giving birth'. As a result of an injection procedural error, she acquires adhesive arachoiditis, an extremely painful and untreatable inflammation of the covering of the spinal cord. Against all of her deep beliefs in the teaching of the church, the intractable excruciating pain causes her to take her own life. Kiernan is devastated and the story proceeds to follow his attempt in his own inimitable manner to make the uncaring medical profession, pharmaceutical industry and government officials address the entire situation surrounding the manufacture and dispensing of epidural injections.Besides the tragically depicted Kiernan, credible descriptions are offered of a number of members of each of the three professions, as well as others with many of whom the reader readily can empathize.  The plot is based on a tragic situation/condition that in some ways still exists and one that the author describes in a most knowledgeable and interestingly graphic manner. In other words, Cry of the NEEDLE is a tragic story rivetingly presented and well worth the read. Reviewed by John H. Manhold, award winning author of fiction/non-fiction.