THE ORGAN GRINDER is a thriller-mystery with touches of what I like to call "Science Possible", written in a humorous and satirical style that pokes fun at religion, politicians, modern medicine, and American society. The cast of characters includes an alcoholic bartender, a curmudgeonly Florida Medical Examiner, a well respected surgeon who because of his incurable gambling addiction finds himself in debt to all the wrong people with only one way out of his dilemna, and an aging Rock Star who pens a song whose lyrics only hint at the real nightmare he will soon encounter. Their individual stories merge in a fugue of crime, murder and death all centered around Darlene, a Louisiana woman of French extraction - beautiful, intelligent, highly educated, urbane, cultured, sophisticated, deadly. THE ORGAN GRINDER takes off from the urban legend about a woman who seduces men, lures them back to her hotel room, and leaves them in a bathtub full of ice minus a few vital organs. But the organization with which Darlene has become associated through a New Orleans escort service is a global enterprise supplying the vital organs of her murdered victims, or "donors" as she likes to think of them, to anyone wealthy and desperate enough to foot the bill. Hiding in plain sight high atop a mountain in the remote Ventana Wilderness area of Big Sur, far from the prying eyes of the Hollywood press corp and law enforcement, The Institute for Elective Surgery on the surface is a legitimate medical facility specializing in plastic and reconstructive surgical procedures for the cream of society. But hidden deep in the bowels of the mountain upon which it is perched is the real business of "The Ice Palace", as it is known by its "other staff" of fugitive medical miscreants.