Host
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4.1 • 179 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
The explosive new thriller from New York Times–bestselling author and master of the medical thriller, Robin Cook.
Lynn Peirce, a fourth-year medical student at South Carolina’s Mason-Dixon University, thinks she has her life figured out. But when her otherwise healthy boyfriend, Carl, enters the hospital for routine surgery, her neatly ordered life is thrown into total chaos. Carl fails to return to consciousness after the procedure, and an MRI confirms brain death.
Devastated by Carl’s condition, Lynn searches for answers. Convinced there’s more to the story than what the authorities are willing to reveal, Lynn uses all her resources at Mason-Dixon—including her initially reluctant lab partner, Michael Pender—to hunt down evidence of medical error or malpractice.
What she uncovers, however, is far more disturbing. Hospitals associated with Middleton Healthcare, including the Mason-Dixon Medical Center, have unnervingly high rates of unexplained anesthetic complications and patients contracting serious and terminal illness in the wake of routine hospital admissions.
When Lynn and Michael begin to receive death threats, they know they’re into something bigger than either of them anticipated. They soon enter a desperate race against time for answers before shadowy forces behind Middleton Healthcare and their partner, Sidereal Pharmaceuticals, can put a stop to their efforts once and for all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Cook's engrossing medical thriller revisits themes from 1977's Coma. Lynn Peirce, a fourth-year medical student at the Mason-Dixon University Medical Center in Charleston, S.C., has her life upended when her lawyer boyfriend, Carl Vandermeer, suffers severe brain damage during a routine orthopedic procedure. Baffled by what went wrong, Lynn and a colleague, Michael Pender, turn detective to find answers. But they only come up with additional questions when they learn that Carl wasn't the only patient at the hospital to suffer such complications, and they discover more about a state-of-the-art high-tech facility affiliated with Mason-Dixon that houses patients in vegetative states. A prologue alerts the reader to the existence of a conspiracy through the journal entries of another victim of bad medicine, Kate Hurley, who ends up murdered during a "horrific home invasion." Cook does a good job of making the medicine intelligible, though the ending may strike some as stretching credulity a bit too far.
Customer Reviews
Absolutely the best book I've ever read
As a pre-med student, I was already interested in the book for its medical plot line. This book turned out to be a book that got my heart rate going as I cheered for the main characters and ached as my favorite character was killed off. Incredible writing. Suspenseful. I actually had to actively slow down while I read so I could savor the story just that much longer. 10/10 would recommend!!
Host
This book was such a disappointment. Very predictable, and for the most part boring. Robin Cook was one of my favorite authors, but sadly, based on his last several books, he seems to have lost his imagination and fire.
Nightmare-Inducing Thriller!
Once again, Robin Cook's writing makes me terrified of hospitals!
A page-turner I did not want to out down.