The Dismantling

February 23, 2015
Simon Worth, a failed New York medical school student, and Maria Campos, a Los Angeles woman seeking a new start, connect in DeLeeuw’s powerful novel about illegal organ transplants. Simon, at loose ends and deep in debt after dropping out of med school, meets Peter DaSilva, who runs Health Solutions and presents a convincing argument that matching willing donors (who need the money) and patients (who can afford to pay for transplants
otherwise unavailable) is a useful, though illegal, service. He also covers Simon’s debts and pays him for successful matches. Maria is a match for the first liver transplant Simon arranges; the intended recipient is a former pro footballer, Leonard Pellegrini. The system DaSilva has developed is smoothly professional, but its
fragility is exposed when the transplant has complications. DeLeeuw (In This Way I Was Saved) skillfully probes the motivations of all those involved, in particular the personal issues that brought Simon and Maria to play their respective parts. Agent: Melissa Kahn, 3 Arts Entertainment

February 15, 2015
A smart novel focusing on two moral issues: organ trafficking and, literally, getting away with murder.Simon Worth, a medical school dropout in his mid-20s, has committed himself for a time to Health Solutions, a sleazy company that brokers organ transplants between clients willing to pay top dollar for a kidney or liver and people so desperate for money they're willing to undergo dubious surgery to make a buck. The company is run by Peter DaSilva, who greases wheels by altering medical records, laundering money and letting Simon deal with most of the dirty work. All is moving along smoothly, if not virtuously, until former football player Howard Crewes tries to arrange a liver transplant for Lenny Pellegrini, a broken-down ex-athlete who for years has been abusing his liver with drink. Worth finds a compatible donor in Maria Campos, a young woman from Los Angeles who wants to start a new life in New York-and the $150,000 she can earn for donating 70 percent of her liver to Lenny would be an excellent start. But things start to unravel when, several days after the transplant at a disreputable New York hospital favored by Health Solutions, Lenny takes his own life, and the hospital feels obliged to start an investigation into how Lenny got his new liver. Maria desperately wants to keep the money, and she convinces Simon that DaSilva, who always needs to be in control, might be planning to kill him to hush up the scandal. Both Maria and Simon have dark secrets that they share with each other-and Maria starts to develop a plan that involves persuading Simon he might need to kill DaSilva before DaSilva can get to him. The novel moves at a brisk pace, and DeLeeuw provides back stories for his characters that make them complex and convincing.