Descripción editorial
From the bestselling author and "master of the medical thriller" (The New York Times), Robin Cook, comes a new tale of suspense-horror about a first-year resident whose life-shattering visions reveal the truth behind some of the greatest medical advances in the history of medicine.
Twenty-three-year-old Michael “Mitt” Fuller starts his surgical residency with great anticipation at the nearly three-hundred-year-old, iconic Bellevue Hospital, following in the footsteps of four previous, celebrated Fuller generations. The pressure is on for this newly minted doctor, and to his advantage he’s always had a secret sixth sense, a sensitivity to the nonphysical. But quickly one patient after another assigned to his care begin to die from mysterious causes. As he tries to juggle these inexplicable deaths with the demands of being a first-year resident, things rapidly spiral out of control.
Visions begin to plague Mitt—visions of a little girl in a bloodstained dress, bloodcurdling screams in the distance, and worse. As bodies mount and Mitt’s stress level rises, he finds himself drawn to the monumental, abandoned Bellevue Psychopathic Hospital building, which to his astonishment has somehow defied the wrecking-ball and still stands a few doors north of the modern Bellevue Hospital high-rise. Forcing an unauthorized entry into this storied but foreboding structure, Mitt discovers he’s more closely tied to the sins of the past than he ever thought possible.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Cook (Viral) proves better at describing the day-to-day work of a medical resident than in generating scares in this limp horror novel set in Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital. Mitt Fuller has landed a spot in Bellevue's prestigious surgical residency program, following in the footsteps of multiple generations of his family. He's not just a nepo hire, though; Mitt was an academic prodigy, graduating from med school at 23. His first days at Bellevue prove nightmarish, however, as he has hallucinatory visions of a young blonde girl dressed in clothing from the mid-20th century, and thinks he sees operating room instruments, such as forceps, move on their own. These disorienting moments pale in comparison to a string of unexpected deaths of patients whose care he'd been assigned to oversee. Mitt's also stunned to learn that two of his ancestors' careers were controversial; one opposed using anesthesia after it was widely accepted, on the grounds that "denying natural pain was the devil's work," and the other mocked germ theory. Cook peppers the narrative with medical jargon most lay readers will have to look up and telegraphs what's behind the possibly supernatural phenomena, lessening the suspense. This falls flat.
