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Ron Barton is everybody’s All-American. A former small-town hero turned Southern collegiate baseball star and Rhodes Scholar, he is the atypical high-profile physician. Barton’s expertise in orthopedics takes him to the Deep South’s medical Mecca of Birmingham, Alabama, where he excels in the operating room as quickly as he did on the red clay diamonds for Auburn University.
Philip Lucci is a rising star in the lucrative field of rehabilitative sports medicine. A former gas station attendant and brick mason turned physical therapist/entrepreneur; he is as much of an anomaly as Dr. Barton. Lucci’s laser-like vision to create the McDonald’s of worldwide rehabilitative care and sports medicine is as powerful as his insatiable drive for wealth, fame and social rank. Like Barton, he too is a product of the Deep South; but the similarities end there. Lucci is the archetype Machiavellian dictator bent on success. Barton is the consummate professional seeking self-actualization through innovation and heightened care. Unbeknownst, they are on a collision course that will rock Birmingham, rehabilitative medicine and ultimately, Wall Street, to their collective cores.
The consummate manipulator, Lucci makes a living off of the knowledge and weakness of others. Operating like a benevolent Mafia Don, he is as brutal as he is cunning. A star as bright as Barton’s cannot go unnoticed by Lucci’s all-discerning focus. Lucci makes him an offer he seemingly cannot refuse—to be a part of his budding rehabilitative health care empire—at more than double his current salary in an office that is as ostentatious as his potential benefactor. But refuse Barton does, as he is not in the least bit impressed by money, or Lucci’s phony veneer. Unaccustomed to rebuke, Lucci is incensed by Barton; and as a result, he endeavors to ruin him—as fitting payback.
Amanda Lucci, Philip’s second wife, is a former Miss Alabama and cheerleader for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Nine years the junior of her husband, Philip, a deprived youth fueled her misguided worldview; until she matured and saw the tragedy of her life. Bored with the Earthly comforts lavished upon her by her overbearing, compromised husband, she retreats increasingly to the high-end escape world of polo, where she meets and falls in love with Dr. Ron Barton, whom she hopelessly admires for his rugged looks and purposeful existence.
Lucci’s bodyguards and surveillance team soon learn of the affair and inform their boss. It is just the edge he needs to ruin his recalcitrant detractor. Having already grown tired of Amanda’s continued rebuffs, Lucci now has the perfect vengeance plan firmly in place.
In the aftermath of the set-up, Lucci’s company rises as quickly as Barton’s disgraceful fall. Although Ron and Amanda ultimately marry after a nasty, highly-scandalized and extremely public divorce, his practice suffers. In the meantime, Lucci becomes a darling of Wall Street and remarries yet another, even younger Miss Alabama and former television talk show host, Clara Roberts, whose vast contacts in the media world become the Fountainhead for Lucci’s far-reaching health care dynasty.
While Barton is weakened, he is not defeated. He vows revenge. Working through his trusted colleagues he learns of a chink in Lucci’s apparently impregnable armor. Barton discovers that as Lucci’s success grew, so did his competitors, inevitably shrinking an already competitive patient pool. To maintain Wall Street’s continued expectations, Lucci has resorted to forcing his accounting sycophants to brazenly cook the books by creating thousands of false revenue entries totaling in the billions of dollars.
Barton devises his own plan to leak this information to the FBI and raze Lucci’s precariously shaky house of cards. But Lucci’s resourcefulness proves to be perplexing, as his intelligence officers learn of the “rats” that threaten their excessive existence; which in turn, reset Lucci’s unforgiving sights. Barton again finds himself in the crosshairs—and he is not alone, as his faithful colleagues are now in danger of succumbing to Lucci’s growing, fear-fueled malice.
As the plot unfolds, it takes the reader on a tortuous, unforgettable courtroom ride. Lucci, the reinvented televangelist catering to a majority black congregation, is first found innocent of securities fraud as a result of shameless jury pool tainting. However, he is subsequently convicted of a Federal bribery charge involving a clandestine payoff to the sitting Alabama Governor to maintain his powerful position on the Certificate of Need (CON) Board that controls the growth and direction of health care in the state. In the end, Lucci lands predictably in Federal prison; but his long-time dream of building a world-class digital, rehabilitative hospital continues nevertheless, albeit with the tweaking of its new standard-bearer, Dr. Barton--who puts his own innovative stamp on its construction and subsequent administration.
Professional Bone is a fast-paced, romantic action thriller that seeks to draw semblance to the ongoing, negative impacts that corporate greed, fraud and indifferent citizenship have had on American free market capitalism.
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"If the Coen brothers would make a movie about HealthSouth, this would be it!"
- Aaron Beam
Black & White Magazine
"Medicare, Medicaid, Martinis and Murder...Chris Warner's fictitious account of the rise and fall of a giant health care corporation will leave you wanting more."
- Nancy McLemore
Black & White Magazinne
"Gripping! This book will be coming to a theatre near you very soon! Once I started I couldn't put it down. One helluva wild ride...a story of unchecked greed, over-inflated ego and monumental hubris. It's Icarus goes to Birmingham."
- Patrick Sheehan, Eyeline Films
Black & White Magazine
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