Marker [Kindle Edition]

Robin Cook (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The bestselling physician/author is in top form as he revisits the love/hate relationship between New York City medical examiners Laurie Montgomery and her lover, Jack Stapleton (last seen in 1999's Vector) in this gripping medical chiller. Childless and facing her 43rd birthday, Laurie moves out when Jack, still traumatized by the accidental deaths of his wife and children over a decade ago, refuses to talk marriage and babies. They've still got to work together at the office of the chief medical examiner, though, and it's there that Laurie's charged with autopsying the bodies of two people who died after minor surgeries at the same Manhattan hospital. As similar deaths mount up, Laurie struggles to convince Jack et al. that something's fishy. (Early on, a shadow plot introduces homicidal hospital employee Jasmine Rakoczi and Mr. Bob, the mastermind of a sinister but undefined plot to "sanction" selected patients using an undetectable medical agent.) Laurie's superiors forbid her to discuss her suspicions with anyone outside the OCME, but she disobeys these orders when she meets the dreamboat chief of medicine at the hospital in question and successfully engages his interest in her theory that a serial killer is on the loose. The body count climbs as another hospital is involved and political pressure mounts to suppress information. True love runs a rocky course, and the plot thickens before the denouement crackles to an electric edge-of-the-seat finale. Agent, Lynn Nesbit. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Cook's twenty-fifth medical thriller revisits medical examiners Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery, whose romantic relationship has hit a major bump. Approaching her forty-third birthday, Laurie wants a family and has grown impatient with Jack's reluctance to commit. She walks out on Jack, but she can't avoid him at work. She soon finds herself absorbed in a puzzling case: 28-year-old Sean McGillan has landed on her table, and she can't determine what killed him. Sean had just undergone routine knee surgery, but she can't find any reason why he went into cardiac arrest in his hospital bed. When another young, seemingly healthy patient dies, she suspects foul play. She finds an ally in Dr. Roger Rosseau, the chief of the medical staff at Manhattan General, who takes a personal interest in Laurie, who has medical problems of her own: she might be carrying the genetic marker for breast cancer. When the death toll at Manhattan General increases, Laurie and Jack are consumed with the mystery even as their continued involvement in the investigation places them in peril. Fans of Cook's previous thrillers will be happy to see the return of two popular characters. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 836 KB
• Publisher: Berkley (July 25, 2006)
• Sold by: Penguin Publishing
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000OIZV1Q
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (104 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Doctor and author Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word 'medical' to the thriller genre, and over twenty 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 over twenty-seven international bestsellers, including Outbreak (1987), Terminal (1993), Contagion (1996), Chromosome 6 (1997) and Foreign Body (2008).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A spell binder, May 24, 2005

By 

Robert Busko (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marker (Hardcover)

Will Robin Cook ever run out of ideas? His latest, Marker, is typical Cook. Fast paced, lots of twists and false leads, passion, love, and danger. Yup, Cook at his best.

In Marker, mysterious deaths follow routine and not very serious surgeries even though the victims are young and healthy. In fact, enough of these deaths occur to attract the attention of Laurie Montgomery, a New York City medical examiner. Laurie becomes convinced that something is amiss and does her best to enlist the help of Jack Stapleton, who she has a bit of a relationship with.

With the medical mystery as the primary focus, Cook also manages to further develop the love affair between Laurie and Jack who is, if anything, luke warm about a full blown relationship.

Since reading Coma, I have been an avid Cook fan. Lets face it, Cook gives us what we read fiction for...a good yarn, believable characters, intelligent plots, and enough twists to keep a taffy factory going for years.

You'll love this book.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Medical thriller with a message, July 2, 2005

By 

Eileen Rieback (Coral Springs, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marker (Hardcover)

"Marker" sees the return of two medical examiners from a previous Robin Cook novel. Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton's personal relationship is on the rocks because Jack is afraid to commit to marriage with Laurie, whose biological clock is ticking and who wants to start a family. To add to her stress, Laurie discovers that she has a genetic marker that significantly raises the probability she will eventually have breast cancer. As a distraction from their personal problems, Laurie and Jack become involved in a series of autopsies on surgical patients who died of cardiac failure in spite of being young and relatively healthy. Laurie learns of a similar series of deaths in another hospital. She suspects they are all related, but is unable to convince anyone else that these may be homicide cases.

Robin Cook became a pioneer in the medical thriller genre with his book "Coma." Since then he has written many other medical thrillers, most of which follow a plot formula that ensures lots of suspense and a bit of medical education thrown in as a bonus. "Marker" follows the typical Cook formula: an enthusiastic medical professional is a witness to a series of mysterious deaths in a medical environment, suspects foul play, and in the pursuit of the perpetrators, is put in jeopardy him/herself. The medical lesson here is about the DNA markers in our genetic makeup that control not only the functioning of our physiological processes, but also their malfunction. In an afterword, Cook discusses the mapping of the human genome, and then presents the uses, both good and bad, that could arise from knowledge of the genetic markers that predict our future health. This is a fast-paced, suspenseful novel with two likable characters and some romantic interest thrown into the mix. Recommended.


Eileen Rieback

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Still a page turner ... but I've got reservations,, March 28, 2008

By 

Paul Weiss (Dundas, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marker (Hardcover)

Robin Cook, the reigning king of the medical thriller, returns New York City medical examiners, Laurie Montgomery and her lover, Jack Stapleton (previously seen in his earlier novel "Vector") to centre stage. Montgomery autopsies a mysterious string of unwarranted post-surgical cardiac arrests for which she is unable to formulate any reasonable explanation. Her fertile imagination makes the leap to hypothesizing a demented serial killer stalking the halls of Manhattan General, a well respected tertiary care teaching hospital recently taken over by the HMO giant, AmeriCare. At every turn, despite an obviously rising death toll, Laurie is met with skepticism, institutional political resistance and even direct orders to keep her unsubstantiated and possibly libelous speculations to herself.

Cook's continuing mastery of the ability to create suspense and to convey the complexity and urgency of the daily running of a major metropolitan hospital, the medical examiner's office, an autopsy, a surgery, a "code blue" and emergency room trauma provide more than enough reasons to keep the pages turning smartly into the wee hours.

But there were definitely cracks in the wall that made "Marker" a much less satisfying novel than Cook's earliest works such as "Coma" or "Blindsight".

The identity of the killer, nurse Jasmine "Jazz" Rakoczi, is known almost from the opening pages. It was never a matter of "who", only a question of "why"! While the characters of Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton are developed in depth with care and a completely believable and quite moving pathos, Rakoczi is a stereotypical cardboard villain - a cartoon caricature of the nasty bad guy that is at best weak and at worst almost laughable. As a cautionary tale against a possible macabre result of the continuing business takeover of the US medical health care system, "Marker" is left frustratingly open ended.

Robin Cook's fans will still enjoy this one but it's probably not the best place for a potential new reader to take the first dip into the pool.

Paul Weiss