Robin Cook Crisis

Crisis

Robin Cook

Putnam, July 2006, $25.95, 480 pp.

ISBN 0399153578

Estranged from his wife and living in Boston with his lover, Dr. Craig Bowman is happy because he is making a lot of money and is enjoying spending it.. Craig gets a call from the husband of patient Patience Stanhope who claims his wife is really ill. Although Craig thinks it is another false alarm he goes over there and sees she is having a cardiac episode. By the time the ambulance gets them to the hospital, she is dead.

Some time later Craig is served with papers accusing him of malpractice. On the advice of his attorney he moves in back with his wife but he is his own worst witness losing his temper during pre-trial testimony. His wife Alexis calls her brother Jack, a New York medical examiner, and asks him to help them. Jack suggests they exhume the body and do an autopsy. The assistant to Mr. Stanhope's lawyer beats Jack up and someone breaks into the Bowman house, ties up their three girls and tells them to tell their parents not to have an autopsy performed. Alexis tells Jack to do it in the hopes of exonerating her husband. Jack agrees to do it but the trial is coming to a close and he has to get back to New York to get married.

CRISIS is another excellent thriller by Robin Cook and this time it is as much a legal thriller as it is a medical mystery. One of the reasons Mr. Cook is so popular is that he makes the medical scenes easy to understand. Jack is the hero of the book as he is the one who takes action and gets punched out by the goons. The ending will come as a shock to the audience because the truth is so stunning yet believable. This is another Cook New York Times bestseller.

Harriet Klausner