‘Harvest’a prescription for thrilling medical tale

CAMDEN — Tess Gerritsen, an admitted “white-knuckle flier,” has high hopes for her new book, the medical thriller “Harvest.”

“My biggest hope is somebody will forget they’re on an airplane while reading this book,” Gerritsen said of “Harvest,” a fast-paced tale about a black-market trade in donor organs.

Gerritsen, a physician who gave up medicine to write and raise her children, set her thriller in a Boston hospital. Surgical residents Abby DiMatteo and Vivian Chao hope a donated heart will save the life of a 17-year-old boy. But then they learn that a wealthy patient who has jumped to the top of the organ recipient list will get the heart instead.

The doctor-detectives start tracking down a disturbing new source for organs that never make it onto the donor list. Meanwhile, surgeons start disappearing from Boston, a kidnapped orphan explores a ship at sea without a clue of what awaits him in America, and Abby’s love life hits a few bumps.

Gerritsen, sitting in her sunny home near the Maine coast, recently recalled the inspiration for a plot involving the harvest of organs from people who weren’t ready to donate them.

She was at a dinner party, sitting next to a retired police officer who provided private security to businessmen traveling in Russia.

“A Moscow cop told him that orphans were vanishing, and the Russian police felt that those kids were being sent to the Middle East as organ donors,” she said.

The conversation ruined Gerritsen’s dinner, but it also got her thinking.

“A couple of weeks later, I was still thinking about those kids. Then I came up with the basic plot,” she said.

Gerritsen said the nation’s organ donor system is not corruptible. But she found the concept of wealthy people circumventing the list believable.

“I don’t think it’s impossible,” she said. “I think where money is involved, anything is possible.”

Her publisher, Pocket Books, has lofty expectations for “Harvest.” Based on her first 150 pages, it paid Gerritsen, who had previously penned nine romantic thrillers, including eight for Harlequin, $1 million for “Harvest” and another medical thriller now in the works. And Paramount Pictures bought the movie rights.

Gerritsen says the money hasn’t changed things much at her stylishly casual home, where toys litter the floor of one room and robust flower beds and rose gardens dominate the view from every window.

Gerritsen, 47, grew up in Sacramento, and went to college and medical school in California. She and her physician husband, both of them practicing internal medicine in Hawaii, fell in love with Maine during a vacation to the harbor town of Camden. They moved here in 1990, and Gerritsen, who had been practicing part time before the move, didn’t even apply for her Maine medical license.

She said she doesn’t miss her medical career, especially when she sees the insurance-related paperwork coming out of her husband’s practice.

“Medicine has changed so much, I think I’m probably just as fulfilled writing,” she said.

Medical thrillers are a popular genre, with writers like Robin Cook and Patricia Cornwell making regular appearances on best-seller lists. Gerritsen says hospitals make such good settings for drama and conflict.

“People are facing the worst crises of their lives. They are dying, or their family member is dying, or they are giving birth,” she said. “You’re dealing with life and death.”