Beat the Reaper (novel)

Beat the Reaper is a 2009 crime novel, the debut novel of author/physician Josh Bazell.

Plot
The plot, written in first-person and alternating between present-day scenes and flashbacks, concerns Peter Brown, a medical resident in the Federal Witness Protection Program.

In the flashback chapters Brown narrates how, under his real name of Pietro Brnwa, he fell in with a Mafia family and became a hitman after avenging the deaths of his grandparents who had survived the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. In the present, Brown must help save the life of a mobster who knew him as Brnwa, lest the patient reveal Brnwa/Brown's location to the local crime boss.

Film
New Regency Productions has acquired film rights to the novel with an eye toward Leonardo DiCaprio as co-producer and Sebastian Stan as lead actor.