Bozeman internist Dr. Richard Tenney prescribes medicine, murder and mystery for a compelling read in his new novel Not With My Brain, You Don’t (iUniverse, 2013).

Not With My Brain, You Don’t is the story of the brilliant, self-centered, and certainly dark Griff Wooden, an aspiring doctor on his way to the top on his own terms. Griff goes after what he wants without a thought of the consequences of his actions on anyone else, using friends and colleagues as stepping-stones along the way...but the people he uses will come back to haunt him in the end.

The oldest hospital in Chicago provides the backdrop for much of the action. After negotiating his way through most of the pitfalls of medical school at the institution, Griff finds himself stymied by his academic advisor, whose own daughter Griff uses to achieve his ends. The academic advisor suspects the medical student has real mental problems bordering on the psychotic, but, unable to ground his suspicions in fact, Griff’s advisor instead makes sure the medical student is not able to obtain a medical license due to his academic misdeeds. Griff knows about some of his advisor’s own “secrets,” however, and though it does nothing to help him get his medical license, that bit of knowledge helps to steer Griff out of America and onto an African country which opens up a brand new avenue for him: Kenya.

Upon arrival in Kenya, nearly the first thing Griff sees is a profusely bleeding man who, it turns out, will be another stepping-stone in the opportunistic would-be doctor’s career. The bleeding man is associated with a pharmaceutical company, and the bleeding is caused by a substance which will enable Griff to make his way back into America: the substance is a type of African snake venom which acts as a blood thinner. Griff sees the potential to use this venom treating victims of stroke, heart attack, and even phlebitis, and convinces the pharmaceutical company to develop the substance, which he dubs Clotobust.

But there’s a problem with Clotobust: it causes massive bleeding when administered. Griff discounts the bleeding problems with Clotobust, however, and pushes the pharmaceutical company to develop the drug anyway, for Clotobust is Griff’s ticket back to America and acceptance in the medical community. And Griff also has an ace up his sleeve regarding the bleeding, a secret he keeps completely to himself, a secret he may ultimately regret not revealing.

Griff finds his way back to the same Chicago hospital that was his bane during medical school after his preliminary data regarding Clotobust is accepted, first by the African pharmaceutical company and then the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He is finally able to obtain a medical license, and enlists the help of former med school classmates on what is still essentially a study of the blood thinner and its effects on those patients it is administered to.

Problems with uncontrollable bleeding mar the use of Clotobust from the start, problems which make the other doctors involved with the medication uncomfortable at best. When patients begin to die, those concerns ratchet up, but Griff blows it off, concentrating instead on the continued use of Clotobust. Griff eventually finds himself in front of a judge and jury as a result of those deaths. Circumstance and people Griff has trampled upon along the way combine for a karmic blow by the novel’s end.

The author draws from his own medical and research experiences in this book, and Tenney’s writing makes it easy for a layman to get around the medical jargon associated with the subject. Short chapters of no more than three or four pages also make for an easier read. The author’s familiarity with places like Chicago and Africa is revealed within the pages of Not With My Brain, You Don’t, as is his knowledge of the processes involved with the approval of a new medication. These elements, with a twist of the macabre thrown in for good measure, combine for a captivating read from start to finish.   

Not With My Brain, You Don’t is available as a NOOK book (e-book), or a printed version can be purchased via amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com