Robin Cook
2007
Pan Macmillan
pp. 532
If you have read other books by Cook, you would know that he writes medical fiction with more than just a dash of crime, thus blurring the boundaries of medical fiction and thriller genres. About a year back I vowed that I would read all of his books and have since been collecting his writings. I think my fascination with his books started with my attempt at studying biology in school. To cut the long story short, if you are planning to read my blog regularly, you will eventually read reviews of all of Cook’s books.
Despite my fascination and the resultant high expectation that I pick up all of Cook’s books with, this one was a bit disappointing. One of the reasons is that I made the terrible mistake of reading a bad review of it on goodreads that. I have realised that if you should reviews of books online, it should be before you buy them. Once you have already bought the book, the review is only going to set the tone for your reading. In this case, the tone did not set well. Nevertheless, I did manage to finish reading it, so it can’t be totally bad.
First, the good things. Despite the five hundred odd pages, it is a quick read. The second and very important plus is that the characters Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery take their relationship ahead. I have been waiting for that to happen since forever. I like that Stapleton is finally over his past. Also, there is a bit more that you learn about each of the characters. All have shades of grey and the book is lengthy because it is a psychological analysis of each person who comes along. This book also made me very curious of Cook’s own background and I did end up reading a lot more on the internet about him. I used to think of him as a physician turned writer, but he appears to be much more. He seems like this mad, genius sorts who is all over the place doing everything at once. That’s quite inspiring.
On the down side, for about 350 out of the 500 pages, I was waiting for things to happen. And they finally happened in the last ten pages. So the wait was excruciatingly long. The court room drama is more stretched than required. I am not so much in for detailing out the testimonies but if you enjoy reading verbatim records, you might like it. At many places I felt that there was repetition of information which was a put off.
It is an average read. There are better books by him.