Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2009
448 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
It's been more than thirty years since New York City medical examiner Jack Stapleton's college graduation and almost as long since he'd been in touch with former classmates Shawn Doherty and Kevin Murray. Once a highly regarded ophthalmologist, Jack’s career took a dramatic turn after a tragic accident that destroyed his family. But that, too, is very much in the past: Jack has remarried—to longtime colleague and fellow medical examiner Laurie Montgomery—and is the father of a young child. But his renegade, activist personality can't rest, and after performing a postmortem on a young college student who had recently been treated by a chiropractor, Jack decides to explore alternative medicine. What makes some people step outside the medical establishment to seek care from practitioners of Eastern philosophies and even faith healers?
Jack's classmate Shawn Doherty is now a renowned archeologist and biblical scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose taste for good wine and generally deteriorating health are taking a toll on his career. He has recently obtained permission for a final dig beneath Saint Peter's, and despite his long-standing grudge against the Catholic Church, begins his research - which eventually takes him to Jerusalem and Venice - only to make a startling discovery with ecclesiastical and medical implications. And when Kevin Murray, now Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, gets wind of Shawn’s findings, he's desperate to keep them from the public. Kevin has strong political ambitions within the Church, but his association with Shawn threatens to undermine them. Kevin turns to his old friend Jack to help protect an explosive secret - one with the power to change lives forever.
"[An] uneven medical thriller ... when the characters themselves comment on the events as something out of a horror movie or a book, suspension of disbelief becomes even more of a challenge." - Publishers Weekly
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Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word
"medical" to the thriller genre, and thirty years after the publication of his
breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created. Cook
has successfully combined medical fact with fantasy to produce a succession of New York
Times bestsellers, including Outbreak (1987), Mindbend (1988), Mutation
(1989), Harmful Intent (1990), Vital Signs (1991), Blindsight (1992),
Terminal (1993), Fatal Cure (1994), Acceptable Risk (1995), Contagion
(1996), Chromosome 6 (1997) and Toxin (1998) and many others.
In each of his novels, Robin Cook strives to write about the issues at the forefront of
current medical practice. To date, he has explored issues such as...
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