'American Adulterer' offers compelling, clinical look at JFK

It takes a great deal of audacity and no less imagination to dissect the libidinous mind of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but British doctor-turned-novelist Jed Mercurio comes equipped with a little black bag, ready to operate.

Mercurio, who created the BBC medical dramas Bodies and Cardiac Arrest, delivers a compelling — if sometimes distressingly clinical — historical fiction that gives the 35th president's life as an unrepentant "fornicator" a full physical.

"The subject," as the author refers to JFK throughout the novel (lending his observations a physician's cool detachment), "takes the view that monogamy has seldom been the engine of great men's lives."

Central to the book's premise is that this great man has been saddled with a laundry list of debilitating afflictions, including Addison's disease, thyroid deficiency, gastric reflux, peptic ulcer, ulcerative colitis, prostatitis, urethritis, mysterious fevers, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, allergic rhinitis, sinusitis and asthma.

Racked with pain, relentless intestinal distress, his movements stiffly hogtied by a back brace, Kennedy is medicated, probed and punctured by a team of doctors in search of the correct chemical cocktail — all to keep the illusion of health and vitality alive for the sake of the nation.MORE