Fail Safe Not Safe / Retribution / Resolution
About Author
S.A. Lonky is not a writer who researches medicine. He is a physician who writes, and the difference shows on every page. With more than four decades of practice in pulmonary and critical care medicine, Lonky has watched the medical world transform from an intimate art form into a data-driven industry where stethoscopes gather dust and screens do the diagnosing. His fiction is the reckoning that transformation deserves.
A Conspiracy of Data
“Fail-Safe-Not Safe”
Shit happens to me. Maybe I shouldn’t talk like that. It’s unprofessional, and after all, I am a doctor. Or, as my ex-wife Sandy always reminded me, a physician. Healing arts. All that
crap.“People respect you, Alex,” she always said. Oh yeah? So why did you leave me for that smiling and pompous plastic surgeon? Because respect doesn’t pay for a Balenciaga bag. Not that I’m bitter. Sandy was never going to be tied down by a paltry internist’s salary
and long hours.
Release Date
9.3.26
Pages
384
Publisher
Black Rose
The World Of Medicine May Be Deadlier Than You Think
01/ High-Stakes Medical Thriller
Dr. Alex Korman has found his comfortable distance from medicine — a boutique practice, speaking gigs, and a reputation built on toxic exposure research. Then Butler Hawkes calls. Max Fischer, the legendary mentor Korman walked away from twenty years ago, needs to see him. Urgently. Within minutes of their reunion, Max is dead, struck down on a Santa Barbara street in what looks like an accident. But nothing about it is accidental.
02/ Medicine Vs Machine
Dr. Alex Korman has found his comfortable distance from medicine — a boutique practice, speaking gigs, and a reputation built on toxic exposure research. Then Butler Hawkes calls. Max Fischer, the legendary mentor Korman walked away from twenty years ago, needs to see him. Urgently. Within minutes of their reunion, Max is dead, struck down on a Santa Barbara street in what looks like an accident. But nothing about it is accidental.
03/ Corrupted Systems & Investigation
Dr. Alex Korman has found his comfortable distance from medicine — a boutique practice, speaking gigs, and a reputation built on toxic exposure research. Then Butler Hawkes calls. Max Fischer, the legendary mentor Korman walked away from twenty years ago, needs to see him. Urgently. Within minutes of their reunion, Max is dead, struck down on a Santa Barbara street in what looks like an accident. But nothing about it is accidental.
See What The Readers Are Saying
– M. Reeves
Lonky writes with the authority of someone who has stood at a patient’s bedside at 3 AM and made the call that matters. This thriller grips you from the start, man, and every page leads to something hidden in plain sight. Worth every turn!
– Carlos Harding
Alex Korman is the most real medical protagonist I’ve encountered in fiction. Sarcastic, brilliant, human, and deeply moral in all the wrong ways. Lonky nails the voice completely and has delivered something very close to me.
– Sara Dheep
This book asks a question that nobody in medicine wants to answer out loud: what happens when the system designed to save your life is also the system most likely to kill you? Lonky doesn’t just ask it. He follows the answer to its ugliest conclusion.
– Kevin Nakamura
The scenes in the ICU are not background detail, but they are the story. The tension is not just manufactured. It’s clinical. And that makes it genuinely frightening in a way that most thrillers never achieve, despite throwing in different undertones and tension.