... wrenchingly bleak truth.

At the end of The Organ Thieves, Bruce is still a mere sketch rather than a fully-fledged character, a skeleton rather than a fleshed-out man. Bruce’s son Abraham, who was 14 when his father died, declined to speak to Jones when he came calling. Jones rightly feels it was shocking that parts of Bruce’s body were taken without family consent; should he not have ensured he had their blessing before borrowing his story? And without that human element, the book also lacks a heart.

In the hands of some writers, this would have become a powerful narrative, weaving one family’s tragedy into a nuanced panorama of race, medical innovation and ethics, scientific ambition and the law. But Chip Jones’s The Organ Thieves, which tells the story of what happened to Bruce Tucker, disappoints, with its pedestrian language, telling omissions and hagiographic portrayals of medical actors.

With elements of legal and social history, this work is recommended for readers interested in the history of race and racism, and how it relates to medical practice in the United States..

... doggedly reported.

... the reportage is unsurprisingly solid, and the depths and repercussions of the story [Jones] discovered are startling. The author takes the time to put the history of organ transplants and their various failures and successes into context before he arrives at the pivotal event of his narrative.