This solid debut novel from the lawyer once named one of Time magazine's "Future Leaders of America" focuses on the highly personal, highly controversial issue of abortion. It is billed as a story of medical suspense, but it also combines political and legal elements into a fascinating, thought-provoking, and gripping plot.

Several characters share center stage in "The Fourth Procedure." The most interesting of them is Congressman Jack MacLeod, a pro-choice politician who finds himself the center of attention when anti-abortionist protesters focus their efforts on his home turf of Syracuse, New York. There the pro-life leader Eli Graves, a rather unsympathetic character, digs up the dirt from Jack's past, threatening to expose his dark past.

The medical aspects of "The Fourth Procedure" appear to be well-researched and accurate, a definite plus. In addition to providing a well-crafted and exciting story, Pottinger does an excellent job of showing both sides of the abortion issue, placing his characters in soul-searching situations that prompt the reader to wonder, "what if it were me?" 

If you like a book that challenges you to think a little while it entertains you, then you should enjoy this remarkable debut from a very promising writer. I look forward to what he does next.

There's nothing original or insightful here about the abortion debate, and if you're tired of that whole set of hackneyed issues, you might not care to pick up another genre novel centering on the issue--it isn't exactly a rare theme. I did find the "treatment" of the abortion issue here tiresome, because completely unoriginal. But pick this up this book anyway. This is one of the funniest, most inventive books you'll ever read.

I'm not sure it means to be that. But it is so ludicrous, yet so well carried off, that I found myself thoroughly captivated and unable to stop laughing.

Psychologically, the book makes absolutely no sense whatsoever--none of these characters is remotely believable outside the fantasy world of murder mysteries. But in this case, that just doesn't really matter. If you can suspend disbelief and treat the thing like a very elaborate, brilliant farce, you'll love it.

I read this book about 4 years ago, when my mom's boss gave her a bag full of books, some were cheesy, trashy romance novels but one in particular grabbed my interest from the others. It was The Fourth Procedure by Stanley Pottinger and I began reading it and finished it in about 2 days. Any reader who has a modicum of intellect will find this novel a breezy, fun and hyper creative read. I couldn't put it down and the ending blew me away. And still to this day I think that its possible and what occured in the book could happen in real life. Some of the topics covered were kinda testy at best as with anything involving abortion, politicians, secret medical experiments which tamper with the natural law among other controversial aspects but this book manages to blend them all in a steamy potboiler worthy of praise and at least a movie of the week if not a full length feature if you ask me.

I struggle with how to rate this book. On the one hand, the two main characters, NY City Detective Nat Hennessey and brilliant doctor Cush Walker are well developed. Each lost his father as a young boy, one in a racially motivated killing and the other probably so, at least tangentially. Each struggles in adulthood with his loss, with the deaths in large part driving who they have become. Tying them together is the brutality of their past and their love interest of the present. In actuality, all of this creates the potential for a great story line and a suspenseful novel. Where I struggle is with the depth of the experimental brain surgery throughout the book. Admittedly, given that this comes from the "medical thriller" genre, I should have been prepared for this. Not having read anything from Pottinger, I did not know what to expect and I found the medical experimentation threads to be a bit too weird for my liking. I kept turning the pages to see how things ended up, but I was left to wish that the underlying issues that I found to be intriguing -- race, bias, revenge, ego, and romance -- could have been pulled together in a different context.

I'm not the most patient person and therefore find it difficult, and at times irritating, to be strung along when it comes to revealing plot lines which was the main problem I had with "A Slow Burning". Pottinger would introduce this mysterious storyline, only to make me wait until the last 10 pages to figure out what it all means. Now don't get me wrong...this can be a very effective way to keep a reader's attention. However, I found Pottinger's style of the "string-along" a bit unnecessary because there would have been no harm done had the plot unfolded without the waiting game. In other words, with some mysteries this technique works well, but with this book it didn't because the mystery lost it's intrigue by the time it was revealed. "A Slow Burning" is a great story. At times it was a bit "Hollywood" and unbelievable, but overall it held my interest from beginning to end. The possibility of the medical technology introduced in the book was fascinating. To be able to repair damaged brain cells and cure all kinds of neurological diseases was a remarkable and well thought out concept. It's obvious Pottinger did a lot of medical research while writing this book. I'm not going to get into a blow-by-blow of the plot in this review because everyone can read it in the above summary. I found the characters to be a bit shallow and their dialogue somewhat unreal and stilted, but aside from that it was an excellent book that I didn't want to put down. A great "lazy-weekend" or vacation read.

What a story! Nat Hennessey and Cush Walker are the two main characters in this un-putdown-able crime/murder/love story, who really don't like each other much at all - they are fighting over the same woman who is in a coma.

The story is brilliant - so many twists & turns that I never ever saw coming. This has got to be one of the best novels I have read..the only negative aspect - it is a bit long & because all the characters are interwoven within in each other, it gets a bit confusing but definately keep reading...it is well worth the ending!

I can't wait to read another Stanley Pottinger book, these are the sort of books I love - not just a boring whodunit, or why they did it or even a boring romance..it has everything a good book should & heaps more! If only there were more like this...