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Book Review of Diagnosis: Terminal an Anthology of Medical Terror

Diagnosis: Terminal an Anthology of Medical Terror
snlash avatar reviewed on + 2 more book reviews


I'm a fan of F. Paul Wilson, so I was really hopeful when I started in on this book. This anthology contains many medically-related horror short stories, which the editor has placed in chronological order (with the first stories happening in the past, moving all the way to the not-so-distant future in the end).

Most of these stories are really good and will stay with you for a long time.

The stories in this collection (as described by Publisher's Weekly):

Pronzini kicks off the collection with a moody evocation of a moralistic madwoman in the last century ("Angel of Mercy"). Williamson contributes a sardonic yarn ("Dr. Joe") about a venal physician who gets involved in an insurance scam, while Pearson digs into his bag of crime-novelist tricks to create a gripping thriller novella about medical vengeance ("All Over But the Dying"). In the clever "Petit Mal," high-tech SF writer Jack Nimersheim imagines programmable biological devices attacking their creator. Elsewhere, Bruce Holland Rogers's "Wind Over Heaven" tells the pleasantly macabre story of a restaurant owner who gets caught up in the world of alternative medicine.

There are a few others not mentioned above, one notably being "Bad Touch" which was the only story in the collection I disliked.

Overall a terrific anthology of medically-related horror!