Ghost Image

Rating:
Summary: A stunning Thriller
Review: Joshua Gilder's first novel, Ghost Image is a psychological thriller set in the world of plastic surgery that moves inexorably from its startling opening episode to its resonant conclusion at an almost breakneck pace.
Jackson Maebry, a rising plastic surgery intern, discovers the night he is called to the ER that the cruelly beaten and burned female patient he is attending is Allie, the girl he has just recently fallen in love with and hopes to marry. When her heart stops he overrides his colleagues, saws her chest open, massages her heart until it beats again. However, having saved her life, subsequent problems come at him with appalling speed. Will her heart still beat for him? Will he and his famous mentor plastic surgeon be able to restore her beauty? Who has done this brutal deed? When he becomes the main suspect desperation takes hold.
Gilder writes with intelligence, wit and fluidity, taking time to allow his characters to ponder the more complicated issues of human frailty, trust, love and loyalty, and to lighten his story of trauma and murder with the informed irreverent banter among medical men.. This is no ordinary whodonit. At one point Allie, confronts Jackson with the facts of her disfigurement, suggesting that he never would have fallen in love with her if she'd been disfigured when he met her, drawing the parallel between her condition and his fear of his inheriting his mother's insanity. Gilder's writing is deft, clear, highly literate, and he brings to the page an astounding (and sometimes horrifying) amount of information about plastic surgery.
I am not usually a lover of thrillers, but this metaphoric story of both mental and physical disfigurement, its causes and cures, held me captive until the last surprising page.

Rating:
Summary: a film noirish novel of great profundity
Review: Joshua Gilder's murder mystery sends its protagaonist, and the reader, into a world of lost bearings and confused identities. The film noirish atmosphere that Gilder so brilliantly captures would take an Alfred Hitchock or a Brian dePalma to capture on screen. Underneath this sense of delicious disorientation, however, runs a deeper level of meaning that is Dostoyevskian in its profundity. It surfaces into clear view at the end of the novel in a scene that is simply breathtaking in its revelatory power. This is more than just a great murder mystery. Gilder knows something about the mysteries of the human soul. The dialogue throughout rings true and Gilder's descriptive powers are completely convincing. This is a great, riviting read that will leave you in a strangely exalted state.

Rating:
Summary: library worthy
Review: read a library copy but i intend to buy one for my library, it's that good. one's interest is kept throughout the book as gilder keeps throwing in twists to keep you wondering which way the story is heading. this book is up there with the best.

Rating:
Summary: Razor Wrought Work
Review: Ross Macdonald redux, at his best, all incarnate and incarnadine in Joshua Gilder and this raptorial first novel. Plastic surgery is a perfect vessel for the multi-layered masquerades of the classic California mystery, which haunts this contemporary work, taking the moods, minefields and ghost images of the Macdonald canon and plastically casting them in Silicon Valley and silicone flesh. We see the swivels and sweats of personalities undone by histories long repressed and then concealed, before bursting from their synaptic confinement. We have a pivotal scene of retreat and revelation in a trailer park in a small town in the California desert that excels any such turn in the plots of Macdonald or Chandler. We have prose more spare and propulsive, and utterly gilt-less than in any contemporary mystery I have read. And emerging from the mists at the end of this dizzying path, we find the intimations of a powerful religious allegory. Don't miss it.

Rating:
Summary: unabridged audio
Review: See book description above.

I must be missing out on something by not reading the book, but the unabridged audio did not satisfy me in the least. The protagonist, Jackson Maebry, seemed very naive. His obsession with Allie made him look like a schmuck. I did not care at all what happened to him, for that matter, I didn't care what happened to anyone in this story. Borriinnng.
I have a feeling if I'd have started the book I would not have finished it.

Patrick Girard Lawlor does a good job with the narration.

Rating:
Summary: The Envy Of Excellence To Joshua Gilder New Book!
Review: The author, Joshua Gilder will be making an impact upon American Literature for sometime to come if this novel is any kind of example. I found this book to be simply a breath of great pride to read.

He blends realism with fiction, good against evil, and doubters to decision makers into a twirling tale to the struggle of figuring out who is committing atrocities of murder in the book. The writer uses his talents to describe the complicated medical terms and techniques into easy reading even as the situation starts to unravel the dark murder mystery. The author writes in a very smart and adroit manner. The arcade of distinguishing personalities written into the story and well-structured, flavorful text combine in capturing you from the first chapter.

I highly recommend you buy this book and take it with you on a trip. It will make your travel go faster as you wait in lines. The ending will make you feel glad you took the time to read it. This man knows how to think and write is all I can say!

Rating:
Summary: LITERARY THRILLER
Review: There are some books you read at the beach. There are other books you read for edification. Ghost Image is that rare literary thriller that does both.

It builds up suspense (based on both psychological and physical threats) as well as any page-turner. But it inhabits a convincing world of high-performance professionals and intriguing eccentrics.

We've all read novels that collapse under the weight of the author's research. Here, Gilder's knowledge of plastic surgery and the physician's life (how did a Reagan speechwriter learn so much about plastic surgery?) melds artfully into the narrator's stream of consciousness.

Ghost Image leaves a long after-image, a great read that stays with you a long time.

Rating:
Summary: As powerful as Chandler, as literate as Dostoevski
Review: This book is an utterly fascinating, compelling read, providing gripping, sometimes harrowing, drama on multiple levels: emotional, psychological, and even existential. This is an unrelenting look into the human psyche and is full of intrigue, compulsion, and poignancy. The author takes his scalpel and cuts deeply, deeply into the human soul.

Gilder, who is a friend, is a very highly respected figure in Washington, DC. He was one of Reagan's speechwriters, he wrote the speech credited by the Library of Congress as Reagan's Gettysburg Address -- the famous Moscow University Speech, and later went on to be a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights under President George W. Bush. I heard on the embassy party circuit some years ago that in that capacity he is believed to have been -- at great personal risk -- the man who directly precipitated the overthrow of the the last Stalinist dictator of eastern Europe (Todor Zhivkov, of Bulgaria). As such he is seen as a bit of a real life James Bond figure.

He has already begun to receive rave reviews in places like the Washington Post and appears to be on poised to become an important new author. Bravo! Buy it and read it.

Rating:
Summary: Rivetting and suspenseful
Review: This book is fantastic from beginning to end. I read a lot of mysteries, and I love Kathy Reichs, who gave this a great blurb, so I bought it. The hero is a "reconstructive" plastic surgeon, which means he does mostly major operations to fix people who have been in terrible accidents or who have present at birth malformations, and the descriptions of his operations are both shocking and fascinating. The difference with most of the forensic mysteries one reads however, is that all of this is happening on living people. It's all the more suspenseful, too, because you like the main character but you're not sure if you can really trust him. It's hard to know what else to say without giving
away the plot, which I bet you won't figure out until the very end. I thought Ghost Image was a really fun, engrossing read. I thought the order and progression of the story at the very beginning of the novel was very well planned out and was thoughtful. The whole plot was very well written and you didn't want to put the book down until you were finished. Cheers to Ghost Image.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!!! Look out for Joshua Gilder!!!!
Review: This book was phenominal!I loved The plot and I recommend it to all readers.The story was so suspensful. Every library should have this book! Look out for Joshua Gilder!!He has written another book called Heavenly Intrigue and it is on my top three!!Please write another book!