June 26, 2017
Dr. Noah Rothauser, the lead of this suspenseful medical thriller from bestseller Cook (Host), is thrilled to become the chief resident at Boston Memorial, one of the country’s preeminent teaching hospitals. The one cloud on the horizon is the recent death, during surgery, of popular employee Bruce Vincent, who was in charge of the hospital’s parking division. Boston Memorial’s prima donna surgeon, William Mason, performed the surgery on Vincent at the same time as he was conducting other operations, a practice known as concurrent surgeries. To shield himself from attack, Mason insists that Noah focus the hospital’s review of what led to Vincent’s death on the anesthesiologist. Despite Mason’s threat that disregarding his wishes will affect Noah’s career, the younger doctor pursues the truth, even as two shadowy hit men build a body count in a subplot whose relevance emerges in tantalizing increments. While most readers will be a step ahead of the sometimes naive Noah, everyone will be rooting for this sympathetic character.
August 15, 2017
Four decades after rocketing up the bestseller lists with his debut, Coma, Cook (Host, 2015, etc.) shows he hasn't lost a microgram of his ability to scare the hospital gown off a prospective patient.Dr. Noah Rothauser is new chief surgery resident at the prestigious teaching hospital Boston Memorial. He quickly finds himself leading an inquiry into three operating-theater deaths involving Dr. Ava London, BMH's star anesthesiologist. London has handled thousands of cases without injury: now there have been three accidental deaths in a matter of weeks. Worse, the hospital's overbearing, narcissistic surgeon (whose specialty brings in big dollars) Dr. William Mason resents London and wants her fired. Starting his investigation, Rothauser learns that London's lifestyle and Beacon Hill mansion can't be reconciled with her hospital salary. Then he discovers she also works as a highly paid lobbyist for the Nutritional Supplement Council, representing an industry Rothauser considers "snake-oil manufacturers." He's even more confused over London's supposed personal and professional history and her obsession with her multiple social media accounts using aliases. Perhaps he shouldn't have jumped into bed with London, especially considering that Mason soon discovers his indiscretion and threatens his job, too. Add assassins working for a Blackwater-type mercenary outfit and a princely amount of Machiavellian M.D. egomania and the complex yet fast-paced plot searches hard for nice-guy characters--Rothauser arrives as a hardworking poor kid who made it through Harvard Medical School but has a nasty secret lurking; London is opaque, part chameleon, part sociopath. Cook is up-to-date on sophisticated medical equipment, but the high-tech setting is really irrelevant to the tale. Where Cook shines is in illuminating that combination of impersonal professionalism and potential terror haunting every hospital corridor. A return to form for the master of medical malevolence.
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