Book Review: Critical

Another in the Laurie Montgomery- Jack Stapleton series, Critical is a medical fiction about the tie up of medicine with the corporate world. With a bit of personal twist, Jack has to undergo surgery himself in a hospital that has a recent history of dealing with a spate of uncontrolled fatal infections. True  to her nature, Laurie embarks on a quest to find out the root cause of the infection, in turn saving her husband’s life, and helping the police nab some gangsters. In this, Cook’s books remind you of stereotypical movies- good guys win, bad guys lose, at least temporarily. The drama to be captured is in the way it all unfolds, the way people think and the medical nitty gritties. Of course, I feel incompetent in understanding half of the medical language. In this, the lines of fact and fiction are blurred for me in every book by him.

It is a lengthy read and it took me a while to finish it. I had a nagging feeling I had read it earlier but I couldn’t remember the story so I kept on with it in the hope that I would remember it and give it up. The feeling continued till the end. On top of that, it is a bit disappointing to blame all the problems and troubles on the corporate world. So the simple solution is to disassociate medical professionals from the corporate world. There is no attempt to understand that it is people who make a place ethical or unethical. I wish that would some day find acknowledgement.