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

Posted on January 11, 2010 by bernadetteinoz

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: The Low Road by Chris Womersley

Posted on March 25, 2009 by bernadetteinoz

Title: The Low Road

Author: Chris Womersley

Publisher: Scribe [2007]

ISBN: 978-1-921215-47-6

Technically this isn’t really a review because I didn’t finish the book. In the portion that I read a disgraced junkie doctor (Wild) and a crook with an untreated bullet wound (Lee) are thrown together by circumstances at a seedy motel on the outskirts of town. They head off on the kind of road trip you’d take if you were unlucky enough to live in Hell, ostensibly to find a surgeon who can deal with Lee’s injury. Another crook (Josef) is angry with the Lee and he follows them. Things go downhill from there.

After I’d read the first 20-odd pages I put the book down and found dozens of ways to avoid picking it up again. I did that same thing three or four more times over the next couple of weeks. But, as I had voted for this book to be the subject of discussion at an online book club and because it’s by an Australian author, I felt obliged to give it another go. I got as far as page 74 before deciding I couldn’t spend my time in the company of these people anymore.

One of the things I love most about reading is that it often provokes strong reactions. I laugh, I cry, I join social justice campaigns, I pull bedclothes over my head in fear. Or, on occasions like this, I feel every crevice of my being becoming full of overwhelming despair. I vowed after finishing Luke Davies’ Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction that I wouldn’t read a book of unending bleakness again, so feeling that despair fill me up like wet cement fills a foundation ditch, I assigned The Low Road to the DNF pile.

I can appreciate the writing. Womersley has a capacity for creating striking and long-lasting images with deceptively simple phrases that I am deeply envious of. It’s the subject matter sucked out my soul. I’ll demonstrate if I may. Josef has broken into Lee’s apartment and before leaving he pisses all over Luke’s bed (don’t ask). Womersley writes

He was unsure to do what to do when he had finally finished. He zipped himself up and waited while the rust -coloured puddle melted into the sheets and mattress. It didn’t give him nearly as much satisfaction as he had hoped, but perhaps he had expected too much.

That is exceptional imagery. But it makes me want to curl into the foetal position and weep.

Before I finish I’m going to have a whinge about the book’s eschewing of quotation marks to indicate dialogue. Is there a point? Is it supposed to be edgy? Modern? Was there a memo I missed? The book has commas, apostrophes and all the other punctuation you’d expect to see in English prose so I fail to see what purpose removing the humble quotation mark served but I found the failure to distinguish dialogue from everything else bloody annoying.

My rating 0/5 (DNF)

Other stuff

My view on this book is a minority one. Most people, including those who judge the Ned Kelly Awards, think it’s a great book. Which shows what I know. Here are links to a few of the many reviews that speak far more glowingly of the book than I do.

Reviewed by Damien at Crime Down Under

Reviewed by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise

Reviewed by Sunnie on Aust Crime Fiction