HARMFUL FOR PAGE-TURNING ADDICTS

By Anne Dingus. Texas Monthly.

Harmful Intent by Baine Kerr is so good that you hope the author gives up law to write full-time. Attorney Peter Moss agrees to represent a woman whose physician failed to diagnose her breast cancer, and the doctor in question is a man against whom the lawyer once lost a horrifying case. Kerr shores up the plot with switchbacks and fascinating medicalese. If you’re fighting page-turning addiction, Harmful Intent will do you no good.

CRACKLING SUSPENSE, COMPELLING MORAL PROBLEMS

Kirkus Reviews.

Kerr grabs the brass ring in this first novel about a medical malpractice suit that takes every turn you can imagine, and some you can’t. “MALPRACTICA NO MAS,” Peter Moss promises himself obsessively after his half-year escape from his Boulder partnership to Costa Rica. But try as he might, he can’t walk away from Terry Winter’s suit against Dr. Wallace Bondurant. It isn’t just that her trusted family physician continued to treat Terry and her daughter Emmy for three years without ever recommending treatment for the lump Terry had noticed in her breast; Moss is still smarting from his failure to get a judgment against Bondurant in an earlier lawsuit. ….

Kerr delivers exactly what legal-intrigue fans crave: crackling suspense up top, compelling moral problems floating beneath the surface with an iceberg’s menace.

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“BAINE KERR’S HARMFUL INTENT WAS THE BELLRINGER FOR ME THIS YEAR AMONG NOVELS BY OTHER LAWYERS ABOUT THE LAW.”

  -- Scott Turow, Authors' Favorites 1999, Mystery and Thrillers on Amazon.com

A Straight-ahead Debut Thriller. Kerr Handles the Courtroom Scenes with Savvy  

By Chris Petrakos. The Chicago Tribune.

After vowing never to take another medical malpractice suit, attorney Peter Moss meets a case that he can't turn down in this straight-ahead debut thriller by Baine Kerr. Single mother Terry Winter is dying of breast cancer after her physician, Dr. Wallace Bondurant, treated her for three years without recommending treatment for the lump that was growing on her breast.

For Moss the stakes are high: He has already lost an earlier malpractice suit involving Bondurant, who was accused of misprescribing medication for a young girl, and Moss is looking for justice. Bondurant, in the meantime, has become head of the Colorado state medical society as well as starting a support group for doctors who have been sued.

Despite Moss' earlier loss, the partners at his law firm give him the green light for what looks like a sure-win case. Of course, it doesn't turn out that way. Terry Winter takes off with her kid, her husband starts making problems for Moss, and Bondurant's barracuda of an attorney throws some surprises in Moss' direction.

This is a pretty strong first novel, as Kerr handles the courtroom scenes with savvy and comes up with enough plot twists to keep readers guessing all the way to the end. With so many legal thrillers crowding the shelves, it would be a shame if suspense fans overlooked this one.

You Ought to Read This

By Ann M. Sato. The Honolulu Advertiser.

Though the book jacket calls it a “medical thriller,” this first novel fits neatly into the legal genre dominated by John Grisham, Scott Turow, Philip Margolin, and the like. Their stage is the courtroom, their language the stilted specificity of the law, and their star is a lawyer with a conscience (perhaps because so many people consider this a rare breed).

Kerr does a tricky thing here. He makes a hero out of a medical malpractice lawyer at a time when “medical malpractice” is considered a multi-syllable swear word. ...

Grisham can’t write as well as he can plot. Turow’s last effort misses the mark. Margolin is stuck in a formula. But Kerr, a short-story writer who has been the recipient of a fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Editors’ Prize from the Missouri Review, is skilled beyond these because he can write.

I have called “Harmful Intent” escapist and by this I mean no slight.

“We read to know we’re not alone,” the character says in the play “Shadowlands.” Often though, we read to be alone: alone with others who interest or inspire or just delight us, who live the lives we are not living. The best of everyday fiction carries us lightly and swiftly there, to that other place, where it is. We are taught, a little, pleasure a lot. We return and say to a friend, “You ought to read this.”

You ought to read this.

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riveting: the story grabs, the plot is believable, and the characters are human

William Beatty. Booklist.

“Moss was restless, and restless lawyers cause trouble.” Peter Moss vowed never to take another medical malpractice case after being defeated by Dr. Wallace Bondurant in a case involving a young girl. Vows being what they are, though, he takes on Bondurant patient Terry Winter, nearing the final stages of breast cancer because of a missed diagnosis. . . . Kerr tells a fascinating story of relationships, medical ethics, and behind-the-scenes legal and courtroom activities. This is a fine job of a first novel . . . for the story grabs, the plot believable, and the characters are human.

as cool as anything from a james bond movie or a le carre novel, rendered with the staccato rhythms of a hemingway novel

By Cameron Stracher. American Lawyer.

Kerr' s Harmful Intent never sacrifices the author's voice for the sake of plot (an unnecessary trade-off in any case, except that it takes time to craft an elegant sentence). Look at this example of Kerr's vivid prose:

He passed west through a big open country strewn about with stuff. Industrial parks, pastures caked with snow. Green Burlington Northern engines parked on a spur. Tractorless trailers arranged in a lot. Cottonwoods strung along washes, apart and ramiform against an orange sunset, complex black images of strength. The backlit rolling ridge line and dark denticled folds of the range and above the range, splitting a seemingly colorfast sky, twisted contrails—simulacra of disaster.

It's no surprise to learn that before he wrote his legal thriller, Kerr's book of literary short stories won him a prestigious fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He's a writer who never lets his knowledge of the law intrude on his writing skills. A scene of forensic handwriting analysis is as cool as anything from a James Bond movie or a Le Carré novel, while rendered with the staccato rhythms of a Hemingway novel.