PEP, January 2004: Media Beat, Book Review: Hospital steward solves murder.

Start the year right:
The Industrial Workers of the World Labor History Calendar for 2004 brings labor’s past
to the present and future.
To order a copy, send $12 to IWW, P.O. Box 13476, Philadelphia, PA 19101 or go online to http://www.iww.org/en/node.
They also sell I.W.W. (wobbly) yo-yo’s.

A student at a teaching hospital identifies the cadaver she is dissecting in anatomy class as a medical resident she knew intimately. Hospital administrators are relieved when a troublesome laundry worker is charged with the murder, but outraged union members go to their shop steward, a scrappy custodian named Lenny Moss, and ask him to find the real killer.

Lenny uses his skills as a steward to unite the workers in a search for justice. In another case, a beautiful female drug representative is murdered on his ward. Woven into the plot is a realistic story of workers dealing with staff cutbacks, asinine bosses, and management that places their profits and prestige ahead of good patient care.

Lenny Moss is a fictional character in the novels “This Won’t Hurt a Bit” (Creative Arts, 2001) and “Some Cuts Never Heal” (Carroll & Graaf, 2003). But he springs from the imagination and experiences of real life shop steward and author Timothy Sheard, a member of the United University Professions union.

When this infection control nurse is not investigating disease outbreaks and watching for smallpox and anthrax attacks, he writes mysteries — short stories, plays and novels. His most recent book, “The Fire in My Soul,” is a real story about a burn victim’s struggle for recovery.

Mr. Sheard’s job as Assistant Director of Infection Control at SUNY/Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn includes preparing the hospital for bio-terrorism attacks — which would be a fascinating subject for his next mystery.

— Ken Nash
Ed Fund Library, Room 211