DR. SANDMAN

Dr. Pat Devlin, a quasi-fictional character, is reunited with his childhood friend, Joe Hoderick. Joe, a dynamic and dominating person and a self-made millionaire has influence on the politics in the metropolitan Washington D.C. area during the Kennedy and Nixon administrations, and had successfully invested a graveyard treasure that they both should have shared.

Pat is an anesthesiologist with decades of experience in the operating room and relates them, in combination with the development of the history of anesthesia in a humorous fashion, intertwined with the main plot. He was there in the days of open-drop ether and participated in the clinical research of the anesthetic halothane that replaced explosive gases such as ether and cyclopropane. Pat was there when the first recovery rooms came into being, leading to the creation of modern intensive care units. He was there when open-and closed-chest CPR developed. He was there when cardiac surgery was in its infancy.

Both Pat and Joe are associated with two kidnappings and three vigilante executions (in a manner that only an anesthesiologist could imagine), in a setting of the C&O canal and the wetlands of the Chesapeake Bay.