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A review by cats22
Critical by Robin Cook
2.0
This was my first book by Robin Cook and I guess I shouldn't have started with this one, since I can see it didn't get very good reviews.
The main problems I had with this book: I guess the gangsters annoyed me the most. I'm not sure what they were doing in a medical thriller in the first place. It seems a huge part of the middle of the book was taken up by these incompetent, 2-bit, hack small-time gangsters with the cheesiest dialogue ever.
They even used phrases like, "The bird has flown," and "The fish have been fed." Ye Gods. Yeah, the local mafioso's name is Vinny. What else?
Anyway, these guys just sit around a lot spying on each other, and you just know that eventually they'll get in each others' way, thus helping out the protag in some way, but for the longest time they're sitting in cars getting on each others nerves and whacking each other up the side of the head like the Three Stooges. "Why I oughta...." "Nyuck, nyuck..."
Other plot points are just a little too much of a stretch for me. Don't want to give anything important away, here, but does anyone believe that one completely unsuspecting person can just happen to accidentally keep avoiding TWO dedicated, trained hit men for a couple of days? Maybe Mr. Bean.
I also don't believe that if a couple of dozen people have contracted an incurable, super-charged flesh-eating virus after surgery, Jack would still insist on going through with HIS surgery. The surgery time and date are obviously an artificial deadline for Laurie to find out what causes the bacteria. It also gets very annoying with Laurie going "Please don't have the surgery...." and Jack going "You're not going to talk me out of it!" THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE NOVEL.
I also thought the "message" was not only annoying but an economic impossibility. Cook seems to think that hospitals shouldn't make any money. They should help everybody regardless of the ability to pay. That means taxpayers picking up the bill, which means eventually bankrupting Medicare and Medicaid, which equals really big UH-OH. If business and medicine really can't co-exist in any way, we're screwed. My guess is that business and medicine aren't really completely incompatible.
Anyway, this could have been written much better.
The main problems I had with this book: I guess the gangsters annoyed me the most. I'm not sure what they were doing in a medical thriller in the first place. It seems a huge part of the middle of the book was taken up by these incompetent, 2-bit, hack small-time gangsters with the cheesiest dialogue ever.
They even used phrases like, "The bird has flown," and "The fish have been fed." Ye Gods. Yeah, the local mafioso's name is Vinny. What else?
Anyway, these guys just sit around a lot spying on each other, and you just know that eventually they'll get in each others' way, thus helping out the protag in some way, but for the longest time they're sitting in cars getting on each others nerves and whacking each other up the side of the head like the Three Stooges. "Why I oughta...." "Nyuck, nyuck..."
Other plot points are just a little too much of a stretch for me. Don't want to give anything important away, here, but does anyone believe that one completely unsuspecting person can just happen to accidentally keep avoiding TWO dedicated, trained hit men for a couple of days? Maybe Mr. Bean.
I also don't believe that if a couple of dozen people have contracted an incurable, super-charged flesh-eating virus after surgery, Jack would still insist on going through with HIS surgery. The surgery time and date are obviously an artificial deadline for Laurie to find out what causes the bacteria. It also gets very annoying with Laurie going "Please don't have the surgery...." and Jack going "You're not going to talk me out of it!" THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE NOVEL.
I also thought the "message" was not only annoying but an economic impossibility. Cook seems to think that hospitals shouldn't make any money. They should help everybody regardless of the ability to pay. That means taxpayers picking up the bill, which means eventually bankrupting Medicare and Medicaid, which equals really big UH-OH. If business and medicine really can't co-exist in any way, we're screwed. My guess is that business and medicine aren't really completely incompatible.
Anyway, this could have been written much better.