Robin Cook
1977
Little Brown
pp. 306
Coma is a medical thriller about a series of patients going mysteriously into coma. It is one of Cook’s earlier books and his passion for pursuing socially relevant issues in the practice of medicine is clear in the book. When otherwise perfectly healthy people, admitted for routine surgeries suddenly start going into coma, a sensitive and stubborn doctor makes it a point to find out the mystery behind why all these patients have been operated upon in the same OR.
It is a fairly quick read. You would not want to put it down. In his later words, he has shifted to including greater details of the character’s personal lives. This one is a bit less personal. It is a classic Cook, reminding me of why I had started reading his work in the first place. Of course there is an element of letting the imagination run too far, but then that is why it is fiction. Cook is able to bring things which are theoretically possible today, or sometime in the future, but you don’t want them to actually happen. He addresses ethical dilemmas and takes a stand. There are other book where I have felt that he is much more clear on his ethical stand than I probably would be.
In reading this one, the mistake I made was to watch the movie before I read the book, and it took me away from the book. Not a good idea. Never happening again. I am also once again left wondering if I should be reading his books in the series in which they have been published.