Heart Seizure: A Novel

So, are you waiting for that heart transplant through your HMO? Perhaps HEART SEIZURE road maps a better way.Los Angeleno Rose Tailor, sixty-something and with a bum ticker, is on the list for a donor heart. Rose's situation is complicated by her rare blood type, which means that just any old heart won't do. The good news is that one finally becomes available. The bad news is that U.S. President Webster, also possessing the same blood type, needs one also after having keeled over on a jog past the Reflecting Pool. Too many cheeseburgers, perhaps. So, the FBI confiscates the organ only minutes before citizen Rose is scheduled to begin her restorative transplant. This doesn't sit well with her son, Spence, a struggling litigator who spends most of his time doing pro bono work for lost causes. In an act of desperation, Spence steals back the heart, liberates his sedated Mom out of the hospital, and flees into the Mojave Desert with the reluctant help of his successful banker brother, Boyd, and two hostages: 3rd-year surgical resident Debbie Robbins and gay LA motorcycle cop Officer Bobb. The five are pursued by the CIA and the FBI, both organizations each having an agenda at polar opposite to the other's.I contend that it takes more talent to write a truly comedic successful novel than a widely popular dramatic thriller because, like men's ties and women's perfume, comedy is perhaps more linked to individual perceptions, and the sight gags seen in the mind's eye have to click. Author Bill Fitzhugh pulls it off commendably well as he escalates absurdity to the point where, Spence having accumulated an ever larger entourage of abductees along the way, culminates a wild ride up Interstate 15 from Barstow by arriving at a Salt Lake City medical center with a busload of Mormon basketball players.The biggest problem with a literary slapstick farce can lurk in the tall grass of the conclusion, at which point the author must end the action, tidy up loose ends, and return the characters to an unremarkably normal existence. If, as here, the humor has gone over the top, the ending can be a letdown. So it is with HEART SEIZURE to the point that a five-star award is beyond my gift. At least for my taste, comedic literature rates five-stars if less riotous and more subtle as, for examples, the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella and, best ever in my experience, the McAuslan series by George MacDonald Fraser, the latter being based on the author's real-life service in the British Army. But don't let me turn you off from HEART SEIZURE - it's a worthwhile and eminently amusing read.

Absolutely one of his best books. The comedic timing was priceless!

I found this novel hysterical the first time I read it; I just read it again and it's almost as funny this time, even when I know the ending.One nitpick, though. The plot hinges on a person's needing type AB blood. Althought his type is rare, a person with AB is the universal recipient. She could take either A, B, AB or O blood. The greater problem would be a type O negative recipient, who can ONLY take type O negative blood.I would also love to see this made into a movie. With that one correction.

bill fitzhugh is crazy!!! I have all his novels and he has a warped mind. I think like he does which is scary!!!!!

Hilarious! This book gives a perfect send up to the absurdity in today's politics and seems to hit on every hot button being trumpeted today.

Great writer!

OMG! The imagination!! I was constantly laughing!Everyone I have recommended this to has LOVED it.

First time with this author and "boy i'll tell ya what" it will not be the last time. this book was absolutely hysterical, it was a believable unbelievable premise. want a good chuckle at the expense of everything that is done in the guise of political correctness, enjoy