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The novel is set in the present day, but potatoes are “spuds,” coffee is “joe,” food is “chow,” mosquitoes are “skeeters” and a doctor is “the local sawbones.”

Like most central characters in doctor shows, Conrad – no one he likes calls him Dr. Hawkins -- is essentially a superhero: smarter, quicker, better and better-looking than your ordinary sawbones.

Handily, Igor also turns out to be a genius of a kind, an expert draftsman and amateur sawbones who’s eager to help Victor with some of his dodgier scientific experiments.

A typical surgeon’s kit from the period contained a variety of knives and bone saws, thus inspiring the slang term for doctors “sawbones.”

“Put the sawbones like me out of business.”