I am such a huge fan of Freida Mcfadden that I will read literally anything written by her.So
I couldn't resist picking it up when I stumbled across this one (which is her thriller debut and had first released almost a decade back only to get it a re-edit and release, with a different title (Dead Med) recently as she herself had felt the earlier version to be too long and too 'weird' ) in a used book store. 'Suicide Med' is no longer in print legitimately and at 500+ pages length, this one is Freida's longest novel till date!
Set in a fictional medical school named Southside Medschool, Suicide Med is the story of a few medical students, Heather, Abie, Ginny, Mason and Rachel and the equation they share with their Anatomy Professor, Dr Conlon. The medical school Itself has it's own grisly history of student suicides.
Mason, the brilliant first year medical student and new joinee, believes that their quirky but beloved Anatomy professor, Dr Conlon might have something to do with the student suicides and he starts investigating them, but little did he know about the box of secrets which he was about to unravel, in the process!
To give it's due, Suicide Med was Freida's first thriller and it got released much before she became a global sensation. Understandably, it's a poorly edited, over long work with a plot which is all over the place. At times, it reads like Dona Tartt's Secret History, sans the nuances and the craft of the same. Though the plot is all over the place, the brilliance of the author in making even this one an eminently readable fare is worth mentioning.The portions involving Rachel and Heather are really fast paced and entertaining.
On the downside, as I mentioned earlier, the plot is all over the place, and the version I read had a really weird plot line involving Abe and his congenital deformity. Those portions are really poorly written and never comes across as a convincing sub plot. The characters lack any kind of depth and I didn't really fathom the bit about Ginny drugging X (mild spoiler alert). The tail end portions involving the grown up Ginny was also meh!
On the whole, if you are a die hard fan of the author and have read everything else written by her, you can give this one a try, otherwise, you can give this one a miss!
-nikhimenon
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