 |
 |
The Boston Globe, MA BOOK REVIEW Cook's latest medical thriller is flawed but fun By Erica Noonan, Globe Staff, 8/20/2003 Only Robin Cook could present a medical thriller that combines stem-cell research, a Bible-thumping US senator, Parkinson's disease, and the Shroud of Turin with a straight face. But, hey, it's summertime, and the reading is easy. You can drift off in your hammock or beach chair with a copy of ``Seizure'' and not worry much about whether you missed a crucial bit of biotechnology that will make or break Dr. Daniel Lowell's effort to implant the DNA of Jesus Christ into Senator Ashley Butler, an unlikable Southern demagogue willing to trade political influence for a secret cure for his Parkinson's. Butler - a politician who has made a career of obstructing cloning and stem-cell research - doesn't want ordinary red blood cells. He insists on the genetic material of Jesus Christ via bloodstains from the Shroud of Turin, scraps of which are made available covertly to surgical whiz Lowell and his beautiful assistant (and lover), Dr. Stephanie D'Agostino, through Butler's influential friends in the Catholic Church. Lowell and D'Agostino are skeptical of Butler's scheme and his insistence on absolute secrecy, but they agree to perform the untested procedure in exchange for Butler's legislative support for their biotech start-up company, which is already heavily in debt. No medical facility in the United States will agree to host such a Frankenstein-esque experiment, so the whole gang heads down to the West Indies to rent out lab space in the decidedly non-FDA-approved Wingate Clinic. Last seen in Cook's 2001 medical thriller "Shock,'' Wingate's staff was best known for performing grotesque experiments on donated human eggs. In "Seizure,'' clinic founder Dr. Spencer Wingate is tanned, rested, and ready to push the limits of human embryo implantation, this time in the Bahamas. Between clinic visits, the senator and the doctors make mischief at the plush Atlantis resort on Paradise Island (this locale will play an unexpected role in the story's climax) and a gang of Mafia thugs/investors begins to close in on Lowell and D'Agostino. Butler's surgery becomes something of sideshow amid all this drama, but the operation turns out to be a success, in its way, but not without frightening consequences. Cook's talent is in making complicated medical details and procedures easy to understand, and he makes the science in "Seizure'' as digestible as an episode of "ER.'' But unlike his better books - "Coma'' and "Sphinx'' - "Seizure'' fails to produce characters with any genuine emotional energy; only Butler's chief of staff, Carol Manning, fights her way out of the cliche-ridden cast of characters to reach three-dimensional status. But Cook, currently on leave from his position at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, still knows how to please his fans. Despite its truly silly story line, "Seizure'' manages to be harmless summer fun. Erica Noonan can be reached at [log in to unmask] Seizure By Robin Cook Putnam, 464 pp., $24.95 SOURCE: The Boston Globe, MA http://tinyurl.com/klbd * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn