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A review by weaselweader
Miracle Cure by Harlan Coben
3.0
Today’s front page news makes a thirty-year old book brand new!
The story, despite its basic ugliness, is simple. A group of dedicated medical doctors and scientists in a private clinic on Manhattan’s upper west side are closing in on a cure for AIDS. The story, topical thirty years ago and even more timely now given the re-emergence and swelling approval of homophobia in the fundamentalist Christian evangelical community, is about a nasty political battle that turns to murder and begins to claim gruesome casualties. The fight is between the left wing’s support for the clinic and their attempt to protect it and care for an embattled homosexual community dealing with the threat of a deadly disease, versus the right-wing community and their attempts to halt the research at any costs and to smear, shut down and destroy the clinic’s ability to deal with what they characterize as God's punishment of an ungodly perversion.
With such a compelling story line and so much grist for meaningful political conversation, Miracle Cure ultimately just became too much of everything. – too much blood, guts and gore in the murders (although, to be sure, given Coben’s propensity for that kind of stuff, that shouldn’t have come as any real surprise); the bag of political nasty tricks from both sides of the spectrum was simply too deep, too grimy and too sleazy even by today’s standards; the mega-church pastor was so smarmy (even for this profoundly anti-religion atheist) that he entered the realm of cartoonish stereotypes; and the romance in the novel was, well, cute and too, too saccharine. In short, Coben took everything over the top and what could have been a 4- or 5-star suspense or medical thriller turned into an unmemorable 3-star crime novel.
And, lest I be misunderstood, I’ll admit to any potential readers that it was still a gripping page turner that I happily finished in only two days. But, for my money, it failed against what it could have been and what it should have been.
Paul Weiss
The story, despite its basic ugliness, is simple. A group of dedicated medical doctors and scientists in a private clinic on Manhattan’s upper west side are closing in on a cure for AIDS. The story, topical thirty years ago and even more timely now given the re-emergence and swelling approval of homophobia in the fundamentalist Christian evangelical community, is about a nasty political battle that turns to murder and begins to claim gruesome casualties. The fight is between the left wing’s support for the clinic and their attempt to protect it and care for an embattled homosexual community dealing with the threat of a deadly disease, versus the right-wing community and their attempts to halt the research at any costs and to smear, shut down and destroy the clinic’s ability to deal with what they characterize as God's punishment of an ungodly perversion.
With such a compelling story line and so much grist for meaningful political conversation, Miracle Cure ultimately just became too much of everything. – too much blood, guts and gore in the murders (although, to be sure, given Coben’s propensity for that kind of stuff, that shouldn’t have come as any real surprise); the bag of political nasty tricks from both sides of the spectrum was simply too deep, too grimy and too sleazy even by today’s standards; the mega-church pastor was so smarmy (even for this profoundly anti-religion atheist) that he entered the realm of cartoonish stereotypes; and the romance in the novel was, well, cute and too, too saccharine. In short, Coben took everything over the top and what could have been a 4- or 5-star suspense or medical thriller turned into an unmemorable 3-star crime novel.
And, lest I be misunderstood, I’ll admit to any potential readers that it was still a gripping page turner that I happily finished in only two days. But, for my money, it failed against what it could have been and what it should have been.
Paul Weiss