Customer Reviews

Mortal Fear

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the most disappointing Robin Cook novel I've read. The novel's protagonist, internest Dr. Jason Howard, is a middle-aged widower who sold his practice and signed a contract with an HMO organization after his wife's death. Unfortunately, this backstory is the most interesting part of the novel. The premise is smart, but the plotting is inexplicably weak. Howard is a nice, hardworking, affable doctor who contends with the plethora of daily outpatients in an HMO-owned facility. Suddenly, a colleague invites him to dinner, says he discovered something incredibly and then dies. The reader is then thrust into the story. The villain is sorrily predictable. Once you read the description of this character in the early part of the book, it's obvious that they're the evil mastermind behind Howard's colleague's demise and the strange course of events that follow. The most interesting character in the novel is Carol Donner, an exotic dancer who had a fling with said dead colleague. She's fascinating, but little is revealed about her and you wonder why she's there at all.

I've been thrilled with the Cook books I've read. If you are too, do yourself a favor and stay away from this one.

Cook once again serves us up a hero who decides to become a private investigator and research things he should leave to the police. At least in this one, the police are one step behind him. Cook gives us his standard sciene gone wrong plot, although fascinating at times and extremely readable. Cook is no great writer, but he manages to hook his audience, and enable us to root for the good guy even though most of the time they act like juveniles.
Readable.

In 'Mortal Fear' Robin Cook introduces another frightening idea , as in his previous books, -- Killing older patients who will probably require prolonged treatment to make way for younger patients with a better chance of recovery. A scary thought indeed. He introduced a similar line of thought in his previous book - Godplayer, and readers who have read that book can see the similarity, and will probably find this one boring, as I did. Not one of his better books, Mortal Fear, lacks the suspense one looks for in his books. GHP is struck by a psychopath who introduces a Death Hormone releasing factor into old patients causing them to age fast and die within three weeks. I rate this book only average, Cook is capable of better books.

In this Robin Cook novel, the reader once again is faced with a predictable plot, easy-to-spot villains, and a medical ethics message. In this case, a widowed doctor and a part-time stripper (who of course is also a ph.d candidate) team up to unravel a mystery surrounding patients who were given a clean bill of health, yet soon after, prematurely age and die. The one key is that the dead all had bad habits like smoking, yet in the initial medical exam showed no signs of immediate physical collapse. On a coast-to-coast journey, our hero discovers that a dead colleague, in search of youth, discovered death. I will say that parts of the novel are riveting, with some truly scary moments and a clever ending; unfortunately, I picked out the villain immediately. Maybe I've just been reading too much Robin Cook lately!

I found this book back towards the dusty shelves in the library(Im not exaggerating). Anwyay, I thought this book started off very slow and eventually got better towards the middle. I found the first 100 pages or so to be not that interesting, until Jason starts to get closer on the trail of Dr. Alvin Hayes. I found that the HMO thing was the key that held the plot together,but I found that Shirley being the evil HMO Vice-President to be alittle corny. I exepected at least some kind of CIA-like organization. The plot was overall pretty decent, and it's a good read if you haven't read anything in a while. I thought the characters were very well-developed, and his narrative was pretty good towards the latter half of the book. Not too familiar with Cook's books, but they're not too shabby.

One of Cook's less famous books, a fantastic blend of medicine and terror. I enjoyed just as well as any of his other novels, if you like Cook, you will like Mortal Fear!

I enjoyed reading parts of this book because of the way that Robin Cook has the ability to intertwine medical research with suspense but ,about halfway through the book, you start to grow weary of the back and forth method that Cook uses to display the eagerness of Dr. Howard to solve the mystery before him. I must admit that the ending somewhat shocked me but overall I have to say that this was one of Cook's more cliche and simple novels.

Mortal Fear is my fifth read by Cook (as of August 2011) and it is tied for my favorite with the other being Sphinx. Sadly though, I just can't convince myself to give it more than three stars. It is a good novel, superbly well-written with a very likeable main protagonist who is usually running away from people bigger than himself, and full of medical science information, but it just didn't quite manage to impress me until the very end. This is one of those books that has a lot going on and almost too many unanswered questions but Cook seemed to know where the boundary was and didn't cross it. They are all summed up in one of the nicest epilogues I have ever read though. I love when some books reward the reader by letting them know what happens to the good and the bad and everyone in between in the end. It is a tight novel with no loose ends and a nice little message about the dangers of scientific research, but there are hundreds of thousands of novels like it so, again, the star count is average. If you happen to have a couple stars lying around, perhaps some from your old third grade spelling tests that you might have kept in the attic since your childhood, maybe you could give Mortal Fear a try and throw a few Cook's way.

This is probably the best Cook book I've read. The premise, while a bit over the top, at least has the ring of possibility to it. He also does a better job of covering up the identity of the bad guys. Overall, a good read.

Contrary to Forrest Gump's popular euphemism about life... when you read a Robin Cook novel you know what you're going to get. First, you're going to get a book concerned with a medical ethics issue. Secondly, you're going to get a quick read with somewhat shallow character development. Lastly, the book is going to be mostly modest lacking any gore, invigorating sex scenes, or harsh language. With these things being said Mortal Fear doesn't stray from the mold. The ethics issue here is concerned with science specializations like genetic engineering and the grave possibilities these have for mankind when used for less than noble purposes by humans playing God. The main character in this book, Dr. Jason Howard, struggles to find out why so many of his patients are dying somewhat prematurely after getting clean bills of health not that long ago. Has something gotten out of hand at the hospital where he works? Is there a new deadly infectious disease on the loose? The book takes you down this path until you eventually figure out what is going on and why the sudden deaths of patients. The shallow character development comes into play with first Dr. Howard and then secondly with other characters he interacts with. Primarily a stripper whom he is attracted to but never has the nerve to approach in any gritty way. We also know that Dr. Howard suffered a devastating loss with the death of his wife but never really see or feel his emotional grief over this grave loss. Where the book does succeed is in keeping the reader interested enough to read through till the end to unravel the mystery of the medical disasters taking place and also to find out the other tiny mysteries related to the main mystery. If you read this book knowing what to expect from Dr. Cook and realize it's going to be like most of his works-good but not great-you'll leave this with your expectations fulfilled but not exceeded.