Category Archives: medical thriller

Review: Side Effects by Michael Palmer

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In a Boston hospital two women, seemingly unconnected, are discovered to have died from the same condition, one no one has seen before. Pathologist Kate Bennett is already intrigued by the case but when her friend is admitted to the hospital with some of the same symptoms that the two women presented with prior to their deaths she becomes determined to uncover the problem. Of course there are shady forces, some close to home, who are just as determined that she will not find out the truth and thus begins the ride.

The overall story arc of Side Effects is not much of a shock: big, unethical pharmaceutical company versus a caring doctor who puts patient safety above all other considerations. But within that familiar framework there were more than enough threads to unravel and characters whose level of evilness was unclear to keep me happy, though I’ll admit to being a bit of a sucker for a medical thriller. Written in 1984 this one is pleasantly unencumbered by the today’s obsession with bio terrorism and harks back to a gentler time when good old fashioned greed was the motivator of choice for most criminals/businessmen. Throw in a possible connection to Nazi experimenters and you have yourself a roller coaster of a story and although the ending was dramatic it didn’t go over the top as so many in this genre tend to do which is another point in its favour.

Kate Bennett is a good choice for a central character, nice enough that you want her to prevail but with human enough foibles to worry that she might not. She struggles with a husband who can’t quite bring himself to think of her career is as important as his own and the portrayal of her conflict with career over personal life offers an interesting slant. Her husband Gerard is fairly annoying, at least from a woman’s perspective, though credible and there’s a bit more depth to him than you might expect to find in a thriller of this type.

This is an above average entrant in this genre, playing nicely to the fears many people have when faced with incomprehensible medical emergencies and also reaching out to the conspiracy theorist within us all. It’s fast, entertaining and recommended.

What about the audio book?

I’ve no idea what the percentages actually are but it feels like far more audio books are narrated by men than women so it’s nice to hear a female voice telling a story for a change and Angela Dawe does an excellent job with both male and female characters.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Narrator Angela Dawe
Publisher Brilliance Audio [this edition 2009, originally 1984]
ISBN N/A (audio download)
Length 9 hours 46 minutes (Unabridged)
Format download from audible.com
Source My collection

Crime Fiction Alphabet – M is for Marker (or when crime fiction goes bad)

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After a break for the holidays it’s time once again for the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. There’s still half an alphabet to go so join in if you’d like.

Perhaps because we’ve been in a nasty heat wave and I am disgruntled today so I’m going to talk about a book that I didn’t like. In fact it’s the book that stopped me reading Robin Cook all together.

Robin Cook’s Marker is the fifth book in a series featuring New York City medical examiners Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery. In this outing Montgomery becomes troubled when she autopsies two bodies in a row of otherwise healthy young people who have had heart attacks after routine surgery.  She becomes convinced that there is something untoward about the deaths and goes traipsing about New York hospitals sticking her nose into things she shouldn’t and, eventually, uncovering a monstrous scheme (the book’s title should tell you something about that).

As far as medical thrillers go that sounds like a perfectly acceptable plot and it would be except I haven’t mentioned the unending, yawn-inducing diatribe on the evils of the American health system (in particular HMOs) that pervades the very (very) long book. Maker is all about the message. Presumably Cook thinks his readers are complete dolts because he repeats the message a dozen or more times during the narrative and then, in case you’re particularly stupid, explains what it was he was saying during a long afterword (should you want to avoid reading it I’ll summarise: doctors are good, everyone else is evil, HMOs actively recruit known serial killers).

As if taking over my fiction for his unsolicited political rant wasn’t bad enough Cook must have been so busy sticking pins in his voodoo doll of a HMO owner that he forgot to include things like credible characters and some suspense.  Laurie behaves incredibly stupidly throughout this book and the on/off relationship between her and Jack suffers yet another hurdle that is the same as the hurdles they faced in the previous four books. also, the ending is sign-posted in large neon lights at about page 35 which makes the remaining 503 pages a complete snooze.

Before publishing Marker in 2005 Cook had released 20 standalone novels as well as the previous four in the series featuring Jack and Laurie (I’ve read all but a couple of the two dozen books). In the earlier works there is a nice balance between science, suspense and social commentary but over time the politics takes on a bigger and bigger role until, by the time we get to Marker, it’s all-pervasive.

As I have mentioned before I hate being lectured at in my fiction. My problem is not that I disagree entirely with Cook’s views (though he fails quite spectacularly to acknowledge that many besides the HMOs, including the powerful lobby groups formed by doctors in the guise of professional associations who make sure that only limited numbers of wealthy people can ever join their ranks, should be shouldering their share of the blame for the mess that is modern health care). My problem is that this is supposed to be fiction and if a novelist wants to send me a message then they should do so via their characters and an engaging story. If I want a rant of any political persuasion I’ll watch cable TV news thanks very much.

I do wonder if, once they’ve made a name for themselves or reached a guaranteed level of sales per book, some authors can publish anything they like. Does anyone who matters actually read new manuscripts from Cook (and others like him) or do they automatically go straight to the printing and marketing stage? Or is it that no one is prepared to tell such A-list authors what they really think of a new manuscript for fear they’ll move to another agent/publisher? Or is it that I’m in the minority of people who don’t fancy being spoon-fed one-sided politics disguised as informed opinion in my entertainment?

Whatever the answer to those questions, don’t read Robin Cook’s Marker. It’s awful.

My previous contributions to the Crime Fiction Alphabet (none of which are irritated rants like this) are:

Review: Pandemic by Daniel Kalla

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Title: Pandemic

Author: Daniel Kalla

Publisher: Tor Books [2005]

ISBN: 975-0765-35084-8

No. of Pages: 407

In China’s Gansu Province there’s an outbreak of a deadly virus similar to the Spanish Flu that killed 20 million people in 1919. Dr Noah Haldane and a team of experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) are called in to help the authorities identify and contain the virus. Just as things seem to be under control there are further outbreaks in Hong Kong and London. On top of having to address the medical issues the authorities are worried that the disease may not be spreading naturally.

This is a fairly standard thriller with a  serviceable but not terribly unique plot. Virulent disease outbreaks, the threat of terrorism, doctors running around saving the world in the nick of time have all been done before. But more familiar than that is the roles and attributes assigned to various groups and people. The main characters are all good-looking, the Chinese are horribly authoritarian, the bad guys are all fundamentalist Muslims and the Americans are all heroes. The cliché ratio was just a bit too high for me. That aside, the book moves along at a good pace and there’s lots of action scattered across the globe. The ending is a little predictable but there’s only so many places a thriller can go so that’s far more forgivable than the cliché count.

Kalla’s made a valiant attempt to make the characters more than two-dimensional but, at least as far as the main characters are concerned, hasn’t really succeeded. As well as being a hard-working, brilliant, emerging pathogens expert Noah Haldine is a loving father going through some marital troubles but the threads dealing with his personal life all felt a bit forced to me. The other main character is the American ‘bug czar’: the female head of Counter-Bioterrorism who’s also a brilliant, sexy, workaholic going through a marriage breakdown. You don’t need me to actually write the phrase ‘sexual tension’ do you? Kalla’s done a much better job with the minor characters such Noah’s fellow WHO doctor and the Egyptian policeman who plays a pivotal role in uncovering the terrorists’ activity. For me they were far more engaging and interesting although their appearances were too brief.

This is Kalla’s first novel and he’s written four more since then. Because I’ve been struggling to feed my medical thriller habit since I gave up on the rubbish Robin Cook writes these days and because there are some elements here that show potential I’m prepared to give him another go. But only if I can mooch something.

My rating 2.5/5

Other stuff

On a slightly off-topic note I’m going to rant about the author’s website. I’ve ranted about the issue of bad author websites before but, seriously, I don’t think it gets much worse than this. Why bother? There’s a nice photo of the author in his scrubs (in case you missed the fact he’s a doctor) and a whole load of over the top pull quotes from reviews and some extremely dull video. There’s not even a synopsis of any of his books (presumably you have to click on one of the dozens of links to online stores for that but I metaphorically stomped off and didn’t click anything).