Perfect Flaw by Frank Spinelli

Narrated by Cooper North

Frank Spinelli’s Perfect Flaw is hard to categorise. It’s a compelling character-driven story told from the perspective of a young, newly-qualified doctor whose dream job quickly turns into a nightmare that jeopardises the future he’s worked so hard to build. It has a bit of everything – mystery, romance, murder, suspense – and a very flawed, somewhat naïve, yet endearing protagonist I couldn’t help rooting for even as I was facepalming at his mistakes! It also has Cooper North at the microphone; it’ll come as no surprise when I say that was a big draw!

Dr. Angelo Perotta has joined the elite Park Avenue medical practice run by his former mentor, Dr. Anthony Stanzione, a top HIV specialist. Angelo’s best friend Tammy, who is working at a local ER, isn’t impressed and clearly thinks he’s sold out, but he’s sure it’s where he’s meant to be. Stanzione is a great doctor, the kind of doctor Angelo wants to be, and the kind of father figure Angelo – who grew up poor and fatherless – is constantly searching for. His hero worship and belief that Stanzione is infallible blinds him to the man’s flaws, especially as his own background – which the author skilfully drip-feeds through conversations and flashbacks throughout the story – makes him equally as susceptible to the lure of money and the high-life.

From the start, there’s the sense that something isn’t quite right at the practice; Angelo is given a lot of responsibility from day one and is quickly introduced to the ways in which pharmaceutical companies do business with medical professionals (basically amounting to expensive lunches, holidays and other bribes). It makes him uncomfortable, but he’s not going to rock the boat. It’s just the way things are done.

Angelo hasn’t been at the practice long when he meets Demetre Kostas, a former patient of Stanzione’s who is leasing the lower floor of the building to house his aesthetic (cosmetic) practice. Demetre is a charismatic and attractive older man who exudes the sort of confidence Angelo longs for. Angelo is immediately smitten – so when Stanzione asks him to learn more about what Demetre does and to be a kind of liaison between the two practices, he can’t believe his luck.

Demetre draws Angelo like a moth to a flame; he’s charming and flirtatious with an air of danger about him and his willingness to help Angelo and spend time with him both satisfies Angelo’s craving for attention and bolsters his always shaky self-esteem. It also causes him to dismiss the attentions of a good-looking cop he meets while at the local hospital – he’s so infatuated with Demetre, that Jason Murphy barely registers on his radar. Eager to succeed and for Demetre to see him as someone desirable and worth wanting, Angelo can’t – or won’t – see, and then deliberately ignores, the red flags raised by Demetre’s behaviour. After making a series of increasingly disastrous decisions, there comes a turning point – thankfully – but by this time, Angelo is so far enmeshed in what is turning into a total shitshow that it could be too late for him to save his career – or his life.

I admit there were times I wanted to yell at Angelo to get his head out of his arse, see how he was being used by the people around him and stop making such terrible decisions – but despite that I couldn’t stop listening to this story, even when he was plunging from one disaster into another. Once we learn about Angelo’s past, that he’s ashamed of and looks down on his humble beginnings and even views himself the same way, identifying as “poor white trash”, it’s easy to understand why he’s so focused on the belief that wealth and status will give him everything he’s been missing, and why he allows himself to make such poor choices. It takes a big wake-up call – a succession of them really – to force him to realise what he’s been doing, to reassess his priorities and to learn to value the things that really matter, like love and friendship. Fortunately, he has good people around supporting him; his sister, who has finally left her abusive spouse, and Jason, who Angelo just about managed NOT to totally screw things up with!

The author – himself a doctor – tackles a number of difficult subjects in this book and doesn’t shy away from showing just how some in the health care business (and it IS a business in the US – once again, I am thankful for the NHS!) have become divorced from the caring side of it and are motivated far more by ambition, money and prestige. He builds the suspense slowly but steadily, right from the beginning, injecting a growing sense of unease that turns to dread as Angelo blindly stumbles from one poor decision to the next.

There’s a lot going on in this story, but while it felt a little slow to start, I was hooked from the beginning – even though sometimes I wanted to do the listening equivalent of watching it through my fingers! It’s hard to hear Angelo getting things so wrong, struggling with massive insecurities (Imposter Syndrome, perhaps?) and losing himself and his essential decency – but it makes for a fascinating and gripping story, with an ending that is all the more satisfying for being so hard won.

I’d had my eye on the print release of Perfect Flaw (but couldn’t get to it; as usual – too many books, too little time) so I was delighted to be able to catch up with it in audio, doubly so because Cooper North is narrating. I can’t think of a single thing about his performance that didn’t work for me; his pacing, characterisation and differentiation are all excellent and his portrayal of Angelo – the book’s sole narrator – is superb. An upbeat manner and a lighter tone convey his relative youth, and his eagerness to please and his need for acceptance come through strongly. Mr. North injects a genuine sense of fear and bewilderment in the scenes where Angelo is slowly unravelling, and he really delivers when it comes to the emotional content of the story in general. There’s a fairly large secondary cast, and all are portrayed in ways that make it easier for the listener to visualise them; Demetre’s deep voice and casual manner depict him as a large and imposing man while the higher pitch with a gravelly note given to Stanzione reveal him to be older and perhaps not as stable as he would like to appear. The only real criticism I can make is that there are a couple of female characters who sound a bit similar, but because they never appear together it’s easy to work out who is who in context. It’s a wonderful performance by a talented voice actor who clearly gets the story and the characters. As I said at the beginning, Perfect Flaw doesn’t fit neatly into one particular category; if I had to label it, I’d call it a character-driven mystery or maybe a psychological thriller with romantic elements. (Yes, there is a romance that ends happily, but it’s low key and not the main focus. Also – the use of the word “tumescence” in sex scenes should be banned!) But whatever you want to call it, it’s nail-biting, angsty and thoroughly entertaining, and I’m more than happy to recommend it.

Caz

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