Tangled Web UK Review October 2008
Critical by
Robin Cook
pbk out August 08
(Pan)
at £6.99
Robin Cook, born in 1940, has been writing medical thrillers since 1972. He still works in medicine. His books have been the subject of film and TV adaptations, but also keep the public aware of technology in medicine and ethical issues. He has covered such issues as organ donation, genetic engineering, fertility treatment, and research funding. This story is about private medicine and profit-making out of medical care in the USA.
Angela Dawson, a medic with great business acumen, has set up Angels Healthcare, and the business is about to go public. Giving huge profits to current investors. The trouble is that patients are dying from a virulent form of MRSA, and the cause cannot be traced. As each of the specialist hospitals in the group does not have intensive care facilities, the dying patients are being farmed out to general hospitals. This has masked the problem for the public heath watchdogs. And turnover has dropped as Ors are closed down. Paul Yang, the accountant, is agitated by the negative cash-flow and the need to report it to the financial authorities before the public flotation. But gangster Vinnie Dominick is one of Angels Healthcare’s investors and is not about to see his money lost.
In the mean time Drs Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery, who work for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the City of New York, are having a disagreement. They are living together, and Jack has ruptured his cruciate ligament. When he is glad to be scheduled for surgery at an early date, he comes into conflict with Laurie. She is already beginning to notice the unexplained deaths in the Angels Healthcare hospitals - one of which is the very hospital Jack is due to go into for his surgery. She must work against time to solve the riddle of the MRSA cases in the face of ever more sinister possibilities that it is not a naturally occurring outbreak.
Serious questions are asked about specialist hospitals creaming off the more expensive surgery options to the detriment of the general hospitals, which are committed to overall care including areas that are more costly to provide. And he raises the question over whether there could be a political motive to seeing the specialist hospitals failing. The reader is fed hard facts and made to face difficult questions about our society. But don’t worry. Cook cleverly weaves hard science and social comment with a fast-paced crime story that takes everyone down to the wire.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
Thousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
Support Tangled Web - Buy Your Books Online
