Intervention - Softcover

Robin Cook

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330509853 ISBN 13: 9780330509855

Publisher: Macmillan, 2010

Synopsis

After performing a post-mortem on a young college student who'd been recently treated by a chiropractor, Jack Stapleton, a New York City medical examiner, decides to explore alternative medicine. What makes people seek help from Eastern philosophies or even faith healers to cure their illnesses? Meanwhile, his old college friend, Shawn Doherty, a renowned archaeologist involved in a dig at St Peter's in Rome, has made a startling discovery with huge ecclesiastical and medical implications. When Kevin Murray, another old college friend, and now Roman Catholic Bishop of New York, gets wind of Shawn's findings, he's desperate to keep them from the public and to disassociate himself from Shawn. Kevin turns to his old friend Jack to help protect this explosive secret - one with the power to change lives forever.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Cook is widely credited with introducing the word 'medical' to the thriller genre, and over 20 years after the publication of his breakthrough novel, Coma, he continues to dominate the category he created. Cook has successfully combined medical fact with fantasy to produce over 27 international bestsellers, including Outbreak (1987), Terminal (1993), Contagion (1996), Chromosome 6 (1997) and most recently Foreign Body (2008).

Reviews

In this uneven medical thriller from bestseller Cook (Foreign Body), Dr. Jack Stapleton, a New York City forensic pathologist who lost his first wife and their two children in a plane crash, is devastated when his newborn son by his second wife is diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma. As a diversion from his efforts to find a cure for his son, Stapleton seeks to expose unscrupulous practitioners of alternative medicine. In particular, he investigates the death of a healthy woman whose vertebral arteries were damaged by a chiropractor. Then the plot swerves into Da Vinci Code territory as two of Stapleton's college friends—the archbishop of New York and an archeologist—battle over skeletal remains that may be those of the Virgin Mary. When the characters themselves comment on the events as something out of a horror movie or a book, suspension of disbelief becomes even more of a challenge (e.g., He felt like he was a participant in a kind of unfolding real-life mystery-thriller). (Aug.)
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Facing the decline of his baby son, who was born with a life-threatening disease, New York City forensic pathologist Jack Stapleton tries to distract himself by exposing the follies of alternative medicine and the Roman Catholic faith. George Guidall's capable narration provides much-needed consistency for a tangle of mostly disconnected story lines. Guidall is gifted at voicing older men who are experiencing life challenges, and this thriller is centered around three: a declining archaeologist who is desperate to restore his fading career, a power-hungry archbishop who is frantic to conceal his involvement in the removal of ancient skeletal remains from St. Peter's tomb in Rome, and Stapleton, who brings them together. Guidall reveals the fear and self-doubt hiding behind Stapleton's renegade campaigns to uncover his version of the truth. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0330509853
• ISBN 13: 9780330509855
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 425