Bone Pit: Gina Mazzio, Book 3

Gina Mazzio Medical Thrillers #3

by Bette Golden Lamb

RN Gina Mazzio is not a wimp, but after nearly being murdered twice, she needs a time out. Needs to get away from San Francisco and Ridgewood Hospital. She and her fiancé sign up for a travel assignment at a small Nevada facility in the middle of nowhere. On their first day, driving down a long, creepy private road, ominous sentry-like boulders block out the sun. When they finally arrive at the facility, Gina’s eye starts to twitch a warning when she stares at heavy iron bars on the second floor windows. What kind of place was this? What were they getting into?

In Bone Pit, #3 of the Gina Mazzio RN series (#1 Bone Dry, #2 Sin & Bone), Gina Mazzio and her fiance, Harry Lucke, a dynamic pair of nurses, get more than they bargained for when they accept an assignment in a rehab facility for Alzheimer’s patients in the desolate wilderness on the outskirts of Virginia City, Nevada. Within a few hours of their arrival, they realize that all is not as it appears.

Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Medical, Mystery Thriller, Ebooks, Fiction

Audible Audio

First published May 9, 2013

About the author

Bette was a nurse, a writer, and an artist. Her art work has appeared in numerous show and is held in many private collections.

Bette was from the Bronx, and she said that growing up in New York City coupled with being an RN was a clue as to why she loved to write dark and gritty medical thrillers. A Marin county writer and artist, she and JJ spent some time in the wilds of Virginia City, Nevada, an isolated throwback to the old West, where she was a trauma nurse while her husband was the editor of the The Territorial Enterprise, a newspaper Mark Twain once ran.

Bette and J. J. Lamb have written novels that include a female serial killer who thinks she’s on a noble mission to save barren women from a life of despair (Sisters in Silence) and the Gina Mazzio RN medical thriller “Bone” series (Bone Dry, Sin & Bone, Bone Pit, Bone of Contention, Bone Dust, Bone Crack, Bone Slice, Bone Point). She said that writing about Gina Mazzio and her boyfriend, Harry, also an RN, was a fun experience, as well as a privilege to write about people who dedicate their lives to helping others.

Bette's most recent novel The Russian Girl was based on a true story of a woman who escapes from a high security nursing home during the hottest day of the year. Her delirium reveals a harrowing story of a young immigrant Russian girl forced to come to America in the early 1900s. Her turbulent life is filled with upheaval, lost love, and activism in a crushing, brutal 20th century journey.

Bette was encouraging to and supportive of new writers and artists.

Reviews

[Tulay · Rating 1 out of 5]

Waste of your time and money.

Comstock working in their lab Alzheimer drug called AZ-1166, to cover up the results of this drugs side effects set up a hospital. Two travelling nurses signed up to work there. High sign-up and monthly bonus payments looked really good, but soon they learned they mistakes. Unbelievable story with gruesome killings and sex. Don't waste your time and money.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing book, with no point, stupid unlikable characters and.. just not worth the time.

[Thom Swennes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gina Mazzio and Harry Luckie are both registered nurses. They have been engaged for a couple of years but the wedding date has not really been discussed, much less set. Tired of the pressure and daily hassle at a large San Francisco hospital, they both agreed to take a new position in the neighboring state of Utah.
This new position is just temporary and that suits them just fine. It is long enough to sate their need for adventure and the money was also good. Gina would be heading a prenatal clinic and Harry would be working in the Comstock auxiliary unit. Both jobs were part of a research center owned by Zelint Pharmaceuticals, a large international firm.
The day before the job would start, Gina receives a phone call from the agency that brokered the jobs and is told her that a last minute change would be implemented and both she and Harry would be working in the same unit.
The Comstock auxiliary unit is located in the middle of nowhere, ten miles outside of Carson City. The buildings are literally surrounded by boulders the size of houses and completely shut off from the outside world.
Zelint Pharmaceuticals is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s and, if successful, could rid the world of another major geriatric disease; not to mention the billions of dollars in profits for Zelint. Two questions remain unanswered. Will AZ1166 cure Alzheimer’s and what, if any, are the potential side effects?

This is a techno-thriller that brings a syncretism of medical conditions and ramifying cures and side effects into play. The story seems to have a dark shadow of evil covering it. Nothing is what it seems and it keeps the reader perched on the edge of their seat; ready to bolt in an instant. The characters are vibrant and are easy to love or loath. I think this book will appeal to a large audience.

[Kristy Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been on my To Read list for years, and I should not have waited so long to read it. Bone Pit is twisted, eerie, and very well written.

[Michelle Bacon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the top thriller

Unfortunately, I did not read the first two books in this series but this book could stand alone. I don't feel that I've missed anything.
Gina and her fiance Harry Lucke have taken on a travel nurse assignment deep in the heart of the desert in Nevada. But they soon find out the assignment was too good to be true and things are far from normal at the Comstock Medical facility.
The flow of the story seems a bit jumpy and at times I struggled to figure out who was talking or how something fit in with the situation at hand. Still an entertaining book that kept me guessing.

[Iris Adorno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suspenseful!

I recommend you read it if you like medical thrillers. It also makes you think of what if this happened in real life. The plot is suspenseful

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the idea behind this is good and rather interesting the execution (excuse the pun) is not so great. There were times where the writing was really good, flowing well and without unnecessary grammar. But then there was so much that had extra unnecessary words, exclamation marks and clunky links that the story kind of stuttered and jolted along, not to mention the fact that I couldn't quite accept that this had gone on so long with nobody else doing anything (especially in this day and age when whistle blowing is so much easier and accepted). I also found the main characters somewhat annoying, they were just too lucky, nosey and on the ball. I prefer my heroes with a bit more grit and edge to them. Not a bad read but not one I'll be repeating any time soon.

[Jamie Rose · Rating 1 out of 5]

BONE PIT

Had this hanging around since November and today I officially give up, which seems to happen a lot with kindle recommendations. I automatically give anything I can't be bothered to finish a one star rating.

I just can't get into it, the language is clunky, over use of synonyms and exclamation marks and characters I want to punch in the throat.

[Christine Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly Entertaining and Different

The book contained many plot elements that came together well: corrupt clinical trials, Amazon rainforest plant medicines, thugs, live autopsies.... Most surprising though was to have the heroes be a male and female nurse. Usually in medical thriller-mysteries the heroes are doctors. The book was compelling and fun throughout.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bone Pit was a fast paced book full of twists and turns that really had me rooting for the good guys (Harry and Gina. While this book is suspensful iti s a lot darker than what i feel comfortable reading, but i still couold not put it down until the very end.

[Sharon Bayliss · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this book!

I didn't like this book at all, although I did finish reading it. The story was not believable and the characters were not likeable. There was too much grossness and too much nasty language. I will not read another book by these authors.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've seen people saying they couldn't finish this one, but I read it in one day and quite liked it. The plot a bit unbelievable and slightly predictable as some other reviewer have pointed out, but I rarely find 100% believable books in fiction, nor would I read anything labeled 'medical suspense thriller' and expect realism. I would instead read non-fiction or a memoir. This book isn't anymore graphic than the other ones, but it is still pretty gruesome. The misogyny from the male characters was toned down significantly, though still exists. The punctuation was still a little messy but better than the previous. The author really loves the word tentacles for some reason, and there are a lot of unnecessary exclamation points in the dialogue. Some of the scenes seemed too long or could have simply been summed up for the reader in a paragraph or two, but not really too bad. All in all it was worth the read to me.

[norm colaimone · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real eye opener.

Very interesting, I imagine scientific research must be very difficult to develop a new medicine. I can believe something like this could happen for real. Pharmaceutical companies with unscrupulous owners more interested in profits than producing useful drugs for the betterment of mankind. I believe in the USA the health care system is for profit and not for the general health of the citizens of the country.
Because of the above I believe the story line may have really happened.
I enjoyed this book very much. Well written, keep my interest, completed the book in a few dats.
I will recommend this book to others. Definitely will read this author again.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this different take on Gina's world. The traveling nurse. The medical experiment. I always love the interaction between Gina and Harry. I like how they work together and play off of each other. It is a very cute relationship.

This is the third in the series. It is beginning to feel a little formulaic, so I may need to put Gina aside for a while and then come back to read more. If you like a thriller, a medical mystery, and a little bit of humor/love story than you will enjoy this series.

[Julie R · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot of this book had potential. I've liked the other books in this series but this one fell short. For one thing it needed much better editing. There were words missing, Harry kept calling Gina "doll", which drove me crazy and just the grammar and language needed polishing. Parts of it reminded me of a teenage horror movie where the characters have no common sense. The plot was promising, but I was disappointed. It will be a while before I read the next one in the series.

[Ellen White · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bone Pit
Gina was wanting to leave as they are driving to a remote place, and the road was more like a dirt path. Signing papers she didn’t want to, had a number of reason why she wanted to leave. This was Harry’s choice, his career, and the pay was excellent, and temporary, he kept telling her.
Then noticing not as many patients, and one odd scientist. Good story of what all they uncover working here.

[Alyssia Cooke · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I thought the previous books were bad, this made me re-consider. This is so appallingly bad that nothing will resuscitate it. It really doesn't help this novel's cause that it's set in clinical trials and having worked in clinical trials for over a decade, I do not have the words to describe just how ridiculous this novel is. You can take it for granted that there is the usual masochistic men who like beating the shit out of women for no real reason (a prostitute gets beaten near to death because she looks like our plucky research nurse) and said plucky nurse nearly getting herself killed at the hands of said men with over the top violence.

So let's get onto the meat of this review. The reasons this book went beyond being just bad and became a catastrophic chain of issues that is beyond any redemption. Let's move onto the plot. And most importantly, clinical trials. Bone Dry has our Gina and her boyfriend moved to a remote Nevada hospital, one which hosts patients taking part in a clinical trial. The trial is in a new 'miracle' dementia drug which technically works, however also has catastrophic side effects that the pharma company and the doctor in charge are determined to cover up because big bucks and all that jazz.

The problem with this is that it's all so ridiculously over the top that it's a) nonsensical, b) nobody is stupid enough to try it and c) WE HAVE REGULATIONS AND INSPECTIONS AND ALL THAT JAZZ. Oh, and d) post marketing surveillance exists (the author even bloody mentions it and conveniently ignores the implications) and believe you me, this shit would be picked up in a heartbeat and the company screwed seven ways sideways. You don't believe me? Let's go into details. We like details. Details are what makes the world go round.

The side effects for this drug that does indeed cure dementia are severe, horrifying, affect at least 10% of the patient population and are completely unmissable. This drug somehow accelerates just about every age related disease and co-morbidity you can think of - cardiovascular, respiratory, blindness, arthritis and those are just the patients we are introduced to. The symptoms progress rapidly and without any other logical cause despite having been otherwise controlled pre-trial. Patients with years to live are now in crippling pain or completely disabled and dependent on other life saving drugs and serious pain relief.

Yet despite patients seeing other health care professionals, nobody else seems to put two and two together or even report this as a possible issue - I work with sites; every one of my sites would be reporting this as a potential SUSAR and if I didn't escalate accordingly, the regulatory body would be on my ass. The company downplays the reactions in the patient notes and removes the individuals to this remote Nevada hospital/prison. So not only is there zero oversight of AE reporting, we're expected to swallow that the families just forget about their elderly relatives, not chasing the lack of contact. Lamb explains this by using the fact that the patients are burdens, but whilst that might work for one or two, it doesn't cover the systemic treatment here.

But that isn't the only reason why this is so bloody stupid. I mentioned post marketing surveillance earlier, otherwise known as Phase IV trials. This covers when a drug has been approved for medical use and begins being prescribed; there are processes in place to continue looking for side effect, particularly rare side effects that weren't caught in the smaller trial patient groups. So what do you think would happen when this drug hits the market and GP's everywhere notice that a significant proportion of their patients have rapidly escalating co-morbidities that were controlled before the new drug?

I can get behind the fact that drug companies are after the bottom line and to eke out whatever profit they can. I cannot get behind the fact that they'd be this damn stupid about it. This is something that would ruin them. The lawsuits, the loss of public trust, dear Lord it would be a financial, PR and legal nightmare straight from hell. There is no way they would try and hide the side effects, because the severity is too severe and the well would run dry in the three to five months it took the first patients to start showing symptoms. GP's would escalate, hospitals would escalate, the mess would explode and the entire damn company would go bump.

There are other issues; the consent forms apparently give consent for the hospital to cremate the bodies after death. This is nonsense. I've spent over a decade in clinical trials and I have never seen any consent form that gives rights after the patient has died, let alone body disposal. It's so irregular that the Regulatory Bodies would be asking what the bloody hell you're thinking and it's not as if you can say 'well, we want to kill them off and harvest their brains if they don't react well and need to be able to hide the evidence'.

Essentially, this has all the flaws of the previous novels but it's ten times worse because it's clearly written by somebody with no understanding of how clinical trials actually work. The author may have been a trauma nurse, but has no knowledge of the pharmacovigilence involved in any trial, how adverse events are documented and reported, and therefore of the fact that it isn't something you can just sweep under the carpet and hope for the best.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the whole book. I didn't find Gina believable. She was complaining about something being wrong before she stepped inside. How could she know? Also that she went off alone, exploring areas she shouldn't didn't ring true. However the idea was really good and I wouldn't put any skullduggery past pharmaceutical companies.

[PMM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story line but Gina drives me crazy when she does STUPID things that a normal person would NOT do. She and Harry were away from the facility. They went to town for dinner to get away from the harassment and hostility. Why on earth would they go back to the facility where they knew of the toxic environment?

[Catherine Replogle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not good with writing reviews ,that said it was different kind of suspense that keeps you reading to the end.

People who like thrillers,suspense books. It's really hard to figure out how they are going to survive. The whole deal.

[Jacky Dewar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only managed half the book

The writing isn't great and I couldn't force myself to finish amidst character inconsistencies, unbelievable plot lines, and weird side stories which felt like they were added in an attempt to flesh out a struggling story.

[Su · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, the story kept moving along at a good pace.

[Linda Street · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful

Not the best book I've ever read , very predictable story. I did manage to get to the end , I'm glad I didn't have to pay for this book

[Crystal w · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting book that kekep s you guessing. It was interesting and had a great pace and a whole lot of mystery.

[P.A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very fast paced. Jumps around characters so characters are not in depth enough. Good goreiness and scenic descriptions.

[Kathryn Otero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was not my favorite book. I had a hard time getting thru it. Still would read another book with the same characters, thought they were interesting.

[Madeline · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit more believable than its predecessors but not a lot so. Again, the villains are just too villainous.

[Beverly J. Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page turner!

I really could not stop reading. When I did, I came back to it. Gina and Harry get in more trouble. But they finely win out.

[Sheila Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and suspenseful thriller with a unique plot. I would've given this one five stars, but it needs a little editing to get rid of the mistakes that lead to distractions.

[sue kozin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bone Pit, good read.

I don't know about Bette and JJ Lamb, I did like there book, "Bone Pit:A chilling medical suspense thriller. Good suspense and fast action.