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Summary
Summary
Acclaimed as the master of the medical thriller, Robin Cook is a fixture on the New York Times best-seller list. Fans of Death Benefit will welcome the return of embattled medical student Pia Grazdani, who takes a job at a burgeoning nanotech firm in the Rockies. Soon after her arrival on the secretive corporate campus, Pia starts to suspect her company may be using human guinea pigs to fuel its latest billion-dollar medical innovation.
Author Notes
Robin (Robert William Arthur) Cook, the master of the medical thriller novel, was born to Edgar Lee Cook, a commercial artist and businessman, and Audrey (Koons) Cook on May 4, 1940, in New York City. Cook spent his childhood in Leonia, New Jersey, and decided to become a doctor after seeing a football injury at his high school. He earned a B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1962, his M.D. from Columbia University in 1966, and completed postgraduate training at Harvard before joining the U.S. Navy. Cook began his first novel, The Year of the Intern, while serving on a submarine, basing it on his experiences as a surgical resident.
In 1979, Cook wed Barbara Ellen Mougin, on whom the character Denise Sanger in Brain is based.
When Year of the Intern did not do particularly well, Cook began an extensive study of other books in the genre to see what made a bestseller. He decided to focus on suspenseful medical mysteries, mixing intricately plotted murder and intrigue with medical technology, as a way to bring controversial ethical and social issues affecting the medical profession to the attention of the general public. His subjects include organ transplants, genetic engineering, experimentation with fetal tissue, cancer research and treatment, and deadly viruses. Cook put this format to work very successfully in his next books, Coma and Sphinx, which not only became bestsellers, but were eventually adapted for film. Three others, Terminal, Mortal Fear, and Virus, and Cook's first science- fiction work, Invasion, have been television movies. In 2014 her title, Cell made The New York Times Best Seller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This accomplished if familiar medical thriller from bestseller Cook picks up the story of doctor-to-be Pia Grazdani after her horrific experiences in 2011's Death Benefit, which included being abducted and witnessing a colleague, Will McKinley, being shot in the head. Pia decides to defer her New York City residency in favor of taking a position with Nano, a Boulder, Colo., company on the cutting edge of nanotechnology research. Nano's development of "a microbivore-based antibacterial treatment" may help Will recover. To no reader's surprise, Nano's stereotypical evil businessman/scientist head, Zachary Berman, is prepared to jump across experimental ethics lines in pursuit of his own ends. Though Berman's company finds a way to enable "a man to survive a massive, normally lethal medical crisis apparently unharmed," Pia suspects that something more sinister is in the works. The concept of a young medico stumbling on a deadly conspiracy may have been fresh in 1977's Coma, but more than three decades later, there isn't much novelty left. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A medical/scientific thriller from Cook (Vital Signs, 1991, etc.). Nanotechnology operates at the one-billionth of a meter level, and at such a scale, the tiniest details matter. In things medical, nanobots can swarm inside your body and fix all sorts of things--but then, as anyone who recalls the old Raquel Welch vehicle Fantastic Voyage will immediately twig, there are dangers attendant. Enter sexy Pia Grazdani, who last turned up in Cook's Death Benefit (2011) and who is now taking her medical education in new directions as a researcher at Nano LLC, a think-tank-ish lab out west. There are sequelae attendant from that last book, too, not least of them a classmate with a nasty head wound, which, given that antibiotics and "multiple surgical debridements" haven't done much good, has prompted Pia to seek teeny, tiny cures. Her new boss is both dreamy and creepy, and he's nothing but one big wolf whistle whenever he's around her. But that's not so often, since he's always jetting off somewhere or another to cut deals with sometimes shadowy figures--and by the end of the story, Cook has involved Mafiosi from Eastern Europe, Chinese Olympic officials, and various and sundry industrial espionage types. Can Pia discover what she needs to without stumbling into some trade secret and getting herself killed in the bargain? Will she wind up "in a drugged state" in some petro-tycoon's harem? Will Zachary Berman ever shake his hangover and become the good guy we know he can be? A by-the-numbers thriller with no surprises but with the usual satisfactions.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Pia Grazdani, the heroine of Cook's previous thriller, Death Benefit (2011), has relocated from New York to Colorado, where she's taken a job at Nano, a cutting-edge nanotechnology company. Though Pia thinks she's found a safe haven there, she begins to suspect that Nano might not be as transparent as the charismatic CEO, Zachary Berman, makes it out to be. While jogging on her lunch break, Pia stumbles across a Chinese man in cardiac arrest. She revives him and rushes him to the hospital only to have Zachary and Nano security guards spirit him right out of the ER. Wondering what the company could be hiding, Pia resolves to gain access to a secure building at Nano, even if it means having to get close to Zachary, whose infatuation with her borders on obsession. As in any Cook novel, the scientific details are fascinating, but here the characters are underdeveloped, and the constant objectification of Pia by almost every man who crosses her path wears thin.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The heroine of Death Benefit, Dr. Pia Grazdani, moves from New York City to Denver to work as a researcher for medical nanotechnology firm Nanobots. She is curious about the company's seemingly endless funding and by chance soon finds that Nanobots uses human guinea pigs to test its latest discoveries. Though she's soon in mortal danger, Pia still pursues the mystery to its darkest bottom. This suspense-filled and scientifically detailed thriller is given a splendid reading by George Guidall. His pacing, inflection, diction, and intonation are all a nearly flawless pairing of text and voice. His seemingly effortless performance almost immediately draws in the listener, giving each character a consistent and distinct voice and each narrative passage just the right pace and inflection. Verdict Recommended for all public libraries.-Michael T. Fein, Central Virginia Community Coll., Lynchburg (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
