Customer Reviews

Crisis

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

Robin Cook pretty much birthed the "medical thriller" with his book "Coma" paving the way for the likes of Michael Palmer and Tess Gerritsen.

I've been a fan of Cook's for almost 20 years, and was happy to see a new release in the stores. I rarely buy hardcover fiction, but chose to purchase Crisis.

Let me just say that had I got this from the library, I would have returned it within the first few chapters. But, since I had bought it, I felt obligated to finish it.

More legal drama than medical thriller, a familiar cast of characters pop up in Crisis--namely, Dr. Jack Stapleton, his fiance, Dr. Laurie Montgomery, and other colleagues/friends from the NYC area.

One of the first things I noticed about this book was the implausible dialgue, especially between Jack and his sister, Alexis. Upon Jack's arrival, she comments that he looks "...hale, hungry, and hollow-cheeked, like an actor in a spaghetti western".

No matter how 'intellectual' a person is (Alexis is a psychologist), I can't imagine a brother and sister talking this way! And Jack's dialogue was formal, too, with a bunch of medical jargon thrown in.

Crisis quickly turns into a legal drama (something I do NOT like to read), with drawn-out courtroom "objections" and "sustained" and so on.

And Laurie? She is constantly reprimanding Jack in this book--much more a mother figure than a fiance. I was hoping that Jack would hook up with Dr. Latasha Wylie and dump Laurie! I mean, Jack *dreads* Laurie's whining and scolding, so he procrastinates in calling her...but he and Latasha share a comfortable rhythm (when doing an autopsy) and enthusiasm.

But alas, it didn't happen...

The ending was very anti-climatic, and somewhat disturbing. Spoiler alert: I was amazed that no one considered Dr. Craig Bowman a murderer! In fact, both Jack AND his sister (Craig's wife) "felt sorry for him (Craig)"! And, while on honeymoon, Jack relates to his new wife Laurie the whole situation that occurred in Boston. Laurie was sympathetic to everyone (including Craig), calling the murder "an American medical tragedy".

Cook insistently implies that the American medical system is to blame for spawning narcissistic doctors (even murderous ones). Hello?! Oh...poor Dr. Bowman. He was the son of a working class guy, worked his butt off, lives in a million dollar + home, and now he's been sued for malpractice. Boohoo! Except, there wasn't malpractice for negligence--it was premeditated murder!

And the fact that Laurie and Jack picked Cuba for a honeymoon (?!) was unbelievable--let alone running into Craig there! (And he didn't even act like he recognized Jack? And this overachieving "dedicated doctor" runs from the law, heads to Cuba, gets a Latin babe on his arm, and just chills on the beach? Come on!)

As always, Cook offers an Author's Note where he beats the drum of one of his pet peeves. (In this case, concierge medicine). Like, what can *most* Americans possibly do in this particular situation? Many of us don't even HAVE health insurance...and would be glad to even have an HMO!

Unfortunately, Crisis is a (very) forgettable book. The red herring (Tony Fasano and company) doesn't even make sense, there was a lot of attention to unnecessary detail, and the plot/characters were NOT thrilling in the least. (Sorry--Jack racing the clock to make his own wedding doesn't count as a thrill for me. As I mentioned, I was hoping he'd hook up with Dr. Wylie!) Also, there was a good many errors in the book (such as missing quotation marks and so on).

I hope that Robin Cook goes back to the way he *used* to write. His past books were enough to keep me up all night--leaving me eagerly anticipating the next one.

I seem to have this love/hate relationship with Robin Cook titles. His latest, Crisis, is no different. On one hand, I like a good medical thriller, and generally the overall plot of Crisis, isn't bad. On the other hand, I get really tired of the incessant flogging of the "evil" insurance companies. Couple that with an ending here that left me scratching my head, and I'm not real sure I'd recommend the time commitment on this one.

Jack Stapleton, a medical examiner from prior novels, is preparing for his wedding. But within the final week, he gets a call from his sister in Boston. Her husband, Dr. Craig Bowman, has been hit with a malpractice suit as part of his concierge medical practice. An older hypochondriac patient died of an apparent heart attack, and Bowman was unable to resuscitate her. The "grieving" husband filed suit, and Bowman is spiraling off the deep end with depression, anger, and indignation. The sister wants Jack to lend some moral support and see if there's anything that could indicate that Bowman shouldn't be found guilty, and Jack reluctantly agrees (knowing the wedding is fast approaching). The court case is made even more difficult in that Bowman was separated from his wife at the time, living with his office assistant, labeled this particular patient as a "problem patient" in his files, and made some very derogatory statements about the deceased which came out at trial. Jack wonders if some of the symptoms point to another cause of death, and attempts to get permission to exhume the body and perform an autopsy. But certain parties have made it very clear that they do *not* want an autopsy, and they're willing to go to extreme measures to prevent it. Of course, Jack digs in, races against time, and discovers some facts that change the entire death scene...

When I started Crisis, I thought it was going to be pretty good. Suspense, personal drama, a little seediness thrown in... But the longer I went, the tougher it was to stay involved. You knew there were outside forces that factored in, but the direction of the plotline didn't make sense. There were long chunks of time in the story that were just skipped in order to advance the story, and it wasn't always easy to make that chronological jump. And finally, the ending just flat out failed. Not only did it not make a lot of sense, it also left all the other plotlines suspended in mid-air. It's not hard to imagine that a deadline was approaching and the author hadn't quite figured out how wrap up the story gracefully...

As "full disclosure", I'll state that I work for an "evil" insurance company, so I might be predisposed to having an attitude about his characterizations. But that aside, an experienced author such as Cook should have done much better, especially at the end.

I sometimes wonder if Robin Cook is actually a pen name for two or more writers... sometimes Cook's books are quite good; sometimes they're dreadful. Unfortunately, this one is painfully bad: Unrealistic, stilted dialogue and boring storyline. I couldn't even finish the book - and that's unusual for me. I'm usually driven to at least see how the story ends. This one was so badly written I had to put it down. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

I agree with "implausible". The book was fairly interesting until the last thirty or so pages. Apparently, the author was late on a deadline to get the book to the publisher because the ending made no sense, left numerous issues outstanding, and left this reader with the sense of being cheated. I have enjoyed this author's books in the past. Not this time.

You don't read a Robin Cook novel for its literary craftsmanship. You do expect a plotline that pulls you through, with cutting-edge science or even borderline science fiction. Unfortunately, this book wants to be a character study. That makes it a thriller without thrills by an author whose characters are generally as overstated as his prose.

The story returns us to Jack, Cook's bike-riding, basketball-playing medical examiner whose exploits predate CSI, Bones, etc. On the eve of his wedding, Jack is called to Boston to help his sister whose husband, Craig, has been sued for malpractice. The suspense is based on when Jack will finally manage to do a much-belated autopsy on the victim, and whether he will manage to get this done in time for his wedding (or even if he wants to get it done in time for his wedding). There's a good story lurking in there, but Cook isn't up to it. Particularly galling is his repeated insistence that a psychologist character's professional training will make her extremely good at handling the crises afflicting her family. Jonathan Kellerman's books have pretty thoroughly shattered any illusion that psychologists are inhumanly good at managing their own lives.

The other characters are stereotypes: the arrogant doctor-defendant whose inability to control his temper makes him his own worst witness, the highbrow defense attorney, the mob-connected plaintiff's attorney with a murderous associate, and Jack, whose lack of impulse control creates most of the story's action. The weird part is that most of the action resulting from the interplay of these characters is irrelevant to the core story.

This is Cook's worst book. There are very few plot surprises, a lot of utterly irrelevant dashing around Boston, and clues that are so apparent to the experienced mystery reader that we want to shout, "You idiot," at Jack. "It's got to have something to do with the..."

Not recommended.

Although it started out with genuine promise, the story lost its way pretty quickly. This book offers unbelievable dialogue from the mouths of unbelievable characters, disjointed story line with a resolution that is totally unsatisfying. What is truly in crisis is the state of Robin Cook's literary skills.

I'd never read a Robin Cook novel before, but I knew he was popular and successful. After suffering through this piece of dreck, I've concluded that "Robin Cook" is a pen-name for a bunch of hacks, each of whom must have written a chapter without consulting the others, with an illiterate editor who pasted them all together. The book was ridiculous--a far-fetched premise, turgid writing, loose ends that are never tied, and an ending that insults everyone who paid good money to buy it. "Cook" and the publisher should be ashamed of themselves.

Have liked most of his books but did not like this one. I plowed through a lot of unnecessary detail and then the ending was so lame and did not address any of the "loose ends". Who was responsible for terrorizing the kids? Why did he do what he did? ETC. Hope his next book is better!!!

Everything Janet Boyer stated PLUS:

I was a captive audience. I was in a car for over a week listening to this book. Had I not listened to this book and read it instead, I probably would have given up on it; it's god-awful. Extremely boring. Very talky. Cook will describe something, and then follow it up with a blow-by-blow discussion between characters. He apparently doesn't believe in summarizing conversations or incidents. He provides far too much detail where it doesn't matter.

Robin, we don't care that the clerk in the store's name was Jack also.

If you have any appreciation at all for dialogue, do yourself a favor and do NOT purchase the audio version of this book. As others stated, the dialogue is totally unrealistic: overly verbose and chock full of big words that even the most educated would not use in ordinary conversation. It's difficult to distinguish the narration from the dialogue, the dialogue is so stilted. Some parts were almost laughable; mostly they were downright irritating. Who talks like that????

The reader is god-awful, I don't care what his credentials are as far as reading books-on-tape/CDs. He mispronounces words (con-summit for consummate) He can't do anyone's accents. He has three modes: the higher-pitched female voice (regardless of the fact that at least one of them is described as having a common accent...he is apparently unable to mimic a Bostonian/New Yawk accent); the Bostonian upper-class type, which means he/she gets a stuffy pseudo British accent; or just the ordinary Jack Stapleton (I'm a doctor who relates so much to a cop and a basketball bud from the 'hood that they are my best friends) accent.

Robin, please. I'm sick of hearing about Jack's recklessness because of his emotional baggage, and the thousands of other ways you describe Jack's guilt for a long-dead family. Enough, please. What's it been? Fifteen years? Retire Jack. For all the references to Jack's humor, he's really not humorous. A quip does not equal humor. His "jokes" would not elicit a smile from me, merely a nod of acknowledgement.

Cook apparently couldn't decide when to end the book. He gives us the blow-by-blow of Jack's effort to get to the Church. At this point, we don't care. The story's over. Then, he does this absurd Cuba sidetrip in which I found myself thinking, "Oh no, don't tell me," and that which I dreaded actually happened.

I'm sure I've listened to worst books on CD. For the life of me, I just can't remember them.

This book was really bad. The ending made no sense, numerous plotlines were not explained, the dialogue was unecessarily verbose, and there were endless trivial details that did not advance the story at all. I have read and enjoyed other Robin Cook novels. This was not one.