Lie Still is marketed-right on the front cover-as a Medical Suspense. While I would not presume to question this description as false, I will warn: don't read this novel expecting Robin Cook or Tess Gerritsen. There are no pharmaceutical companies testing Drugs on unknowing victims, or engineered viruses run amok. Not a single organ is harvested from the poor to give to the rich. The suspenseful elements of Lie Still all revolve around personal and ethical dilemmas. Because of this, in many ways Lie Still reads as very believable.

Lie Still is written entirely in first person, and reads as if it were the autobiographic memoir of a midlife doctor looking back upon his career and trying to explain how he came to the unfortunate state he is in. There is a conversational style to the writing, as if Dr. Malcolm Ishmail, the protagonist of the novel, is speaking to a new friend. The medical jargon is kept to a minimum. Farris even goes so far as to explain that Hollywood writers use more jargon than doctors do.

Lie Still consists of two related stories and a collection of vignettes all featuring the fictional Dr. Ishmail. The related stories both take place about ten months apart, during his attempt to finish internship. The vignettes take place over the next seven years, and revolve around his life as a disgraced itinerant physician in small town emergency rooms. The novel opens during the second story in the time line, on what is described as 'Henry Rojelio day one'. Henry is a young man with a history of asthma and malingering. As the book begins, Henry's typical ER visit has taken a downturn-Henry has 'turned blue'. He goes into cardiac arrest and is transported to a larger hospital. From here, we find out, things truly begin to fall apart for young Dr. Ishmail. Jump ahead nearly seven years later and Dr. Ishmail receives a package related to the events of the tragedy. The remainder of the book reads as if it is Ishmail's telling of what happened.

The problems which eventually lead Dr. Ishmail to relate his tale to us, begin with an affair with Dr. Mimi Lyle, an associate professor and Dr. Ishmail's instructor during his neurosurgery residency. The ethics are questionable, but the sex is good, described by the author somewhat graphically. Real problems arise when Ishmail becomes aware that Dr. Lyle is a less than competent neurosurgeon, and places the welfare, and even the lives of her patients, at risk when she cuts into their brains. Dr. Ishmail becomes increasingly entrenched in the ethical dilemma of his situation.

People with an interest in the in-and-outs of daily life in a small Southwest emergency room will find this novel fascinating. Lie Still gives a strikingly different view than that presented by "ER." The short vignettes of emergency room situations were the most interesting aspect of this novel for me. Dr. Farris points out in an endnote that most of these tales come from his own experience. I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in emergency room stories, and questions of medical ethics.