Mortal Fear

Robin Cook, the man who invented medical techno-horror takes you on a startling and chilling odyssey into the origins of life and death in Mortal Fear.

When an eminent biomolecular geneticist dies violently before his eyes, a doctor must use more than his medical knowledge to explain what he comes to believe is murder, and to stop a scientific breakthrough from becoming a curse instead of a miracle.

There was a lot that internist Jason Howard didn't know about Dr. Alvin Hayes. But when the scientist met his sudden end, it all came out with a vengeance – for the academically respected geneticist had led a double life, and the private side was damning.

Dismissing official police reports linking Hayes's death to his associations with the sordid side of society, Jason believes Hayes was silenced to keep him from revealing the results of his research, and the secret lies not in the back streets of Boston's erotic underworld, the Combat Zone, but in the high-tech genetics laboratories of the Good Health Plan clinic.

Overcoming his own personal emotional problems, Jason turns his powers of diagnosis to deduction, vowing to solve the mystery no matter who tries to stop him . . .

With this disturbing story, DNA research is shown to have a fearful potential, not only through possible mistakes and accidents, but ironically even through success. Splendidly researched and intricately plotted, Mortal Fear is Robin Cook at his prophetic and galvanizing best.