In his fiction debut, Dr. Gupta—a practicing neurosurgeon and Chief Medical Correspondent at CNN—transports readers into an exclusive cadre of Chelsea General surgeons linked by the dreaded and revered Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) conferences on the titular Monday mornings—the meetings at which doctors are held accountable for mistakes or deaths in the operating room. Each of the lavishly described (though emotionally flat) main characters is a caricature of a surgeon: for the overly-dedicated Sydney Saxena, life is career, pager, exercise. Tina Ridgeway—the gorgeous, married brainiac—and heartthrob Ty Wilson, the first to endure an M&M, satisfy the requisite hospital drama illicit romance; meticulous Sung Park wants to see Ty "publicly crucified;" and XXXL-scrubbed George "Gato Grande" Villanueva is the brilliant, brash, ER chief and former NFL player around which much of the novel revolves. Despite these potentially intriguing character sketches and plot points, Gupta (Cheating Death) attempts to weave too many threads and is thus unable to sufficiently develop his doctors or a compelling story line. Though the book reads quickly, medical jargon will alternately intrigue and frustrate a general audience, and readers will be left wondering whether Gupta should be the subject of his own M&M. (Mar.)