Dr. Paul Boor Releases New Book 'The Ice Merchant'

The year is 1889, and an enterprising ice merchant from New York, Nicolas Van Horne, has just docked his ship in Galveston, Texas. The early part of his 20-year career had been straightforward: Deliver solid blocks of ice to points south. But recently, he'd been carving out a lucrative side business. Medical schools were popping up across the country, and doctors were desperate to keep time with the spreading of infectious diseases like cholera and yellow fever. The boom in the medical community was fueling a grisly trade - the trafficking of human cadavers - and ice was a natural preservative.

Van Horne is about to make a delivery to a new medical school in Galveston, and deep in his ship's icy hold are a dozen bodies, concealed from the harbor inspector under 20,000 tons of ice.

Something about this particular "cargo" is haunting Van Horne. His shipment contains the bodies of two young boys, said to have frozen to death. But his instincts are nudging him to consider other possibilities. Is he unknowingly trafficking the bodies of murder victims?

With the help of a female scientist in Galveston, Van Horne tries to solve the mystery buried in his ice and finds himself inextricably entangled in the woman's experimental work to find a cure for yellow fever.

The Ice Merchant, written by Paul Boor, M.D., immerses readers in a chilling depiction of the early medical community's frantic pursuit of advancement and the lives affected by it. The book blends historic and scientific facts with intrigue and romance in a fictional story that exposes very real truths about the history of medical research.

Dr. Boor is a professor of pathology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. A Harvard-trained patholo¬gist and scientist, Boor uses his medical knowledge and expertise to feed his other passion, writing.

In 1990, Boor began writing short stories that addressed the vagaries of biology and the quirky people who inhabit research labs. His first book, The Blood Notes of Peter Mallow (2007), unfolds inside a high-level research facility where Dr. Mallow is hot on the trail of an emerging bird-flu virus. But in this modern-day biomedical thriller, the most dangerous organisms in the lab are the scientists themselves.

Boor's upcoming book, Biopsy, tells the story of a young Boston pathologist who uncovers a heinous assassination plot involving Harvard professors.

Boor lives on Galveston Island, where he continues to research, teach and write.

The Ice Merchant
ISBN-10: 0786754931
ISBN-13: 978-0786754939
Available at www.Amazon.com and other online book sellers.

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