Scalpel

by Horace McCoy

doctor must choose between two loves

Genres: Fiction, Noir, Mystery

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Horace Stanley McCoy (1897–1955) was an American novelist whose gritty, hardboiled novels documented the hardships Americans faced during the Depression and post-war periods. McCoy grew up in Tennessee and Texas; after serving in the air force during World War I, he worked as a journalist, film actor, and screenplay writer, and is author of five novels including They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935) and the noir classic Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948). Though underappreciated in his own time, McCoy is now recognized as a peer of Dashiell Hammett and James Cain. He died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1955.

Reviews

[Slagle Rock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewers who said McCoy was a bit too ambitious with trying to write the Great American Novel when he penned Scalpel may be on to something; it does overextend itself, maybe, a bit, in presenting a main character who overcomes his coal town roots to become a hard drinking, high society surgeon in mid-Century Pittsburgh. Between the mines and his deluxe medical office, we also read of Dr. Thomas Owen's college days and adventures on the football field, distinguished service as soldier and man of medicine during World War Two and his amorous affairs with some of Europe's wealthiest women. The book finds him returning home to Western Pennsylvania to the small coal patch he outgrew years ago and his mother and nephew who are still held in its sway. Owen makes his way to nearby Pittsburgh where he meets a wealthy woman who helps him connect with and succeed among the city's wealthy elite. As Owen contemplates the city's skyscrapers and glowing red hot steel mills along the banks of the Monongahela from his posh apartment overlooking it all, he can't escape the feeling he is a hack. He drinks like a fish and is often contemptible to his family, friends and associates. He has good reasons for being bitter towards his hometown; the reasons for his insecurity about being a hack doctor aren't quite fully developed in the book, but no matter. He meets a nurse who helps him find the path back to believing in himself, though, I must say, his heavy drinking remains unfinished business by then end of this novel's somewhat happy ending. It's not the perfect novel, not by a long shot, but I found it compelling enough to keep turning the pages. McCoy didn't waste time with lots of abstractions and I appreciate that. I also appreciated the glimpse of 1950s Pittsburgh this book offers.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to know where to begin with this book. Is the protagonist a stand-in for the author who saw himself as forever held down by other people who kept him from realizing he was a genius? Is it all a big inside joke? This book reeks of a mid-century attempt to write The Great American Novel but at one point the main character quotes a previous McCoy book and says it was by a "great author." That can't be serious, can it? I puzzled over this book the first time I read it almost twenty years ago and I doubt I'll ever figure it out. On a side note, this novel, like almost all of McCoy's contains a moment of homophobia that has little or nothing to do with the plot.