Mortal Fear

Rating:
Summary: Good moments, but predictable!
Review: In this Robin Cook novel, the reader once again is faced with a predictable plot, easy-to-spot villains, and a medical ethics message. In this case, a widowed doctor and a part-time stripper (who of course is also a ph.d candidate) team up to unravel a mystery surrounding patients who were given a clean bill of health, yet soon after, prematurely age and die. The one key is that the dead all had bad habits like smoking, yet in the initial medical exam showed no signs of immediate physical collapse. On a coast-to-coast journey, our hero discovers that a dead colleague, in search of youth, discovered death. I will say that parts of the novel are riveting, with some truly scary moments and a clever ending; unfortunately, I picked out the villain immediately. Maybe I've just been reading too much Robin Cook lately!

Rating:
Summary: This IS the Weakest Link
Review: Just like the title of the book, Mortal Fear, I thought it was one of the scariest book written by Cook. Don't read it at night.. but like other Cook books, you just don't have any reason to stop once you open the book!

Rating:
Summary: Scariest Cook book, yet
Review: Just like the title of the book, Mortal Fear, I thought it was one of the scariest book written by Cook. Don't read it at night.. but like other Cook books, you just don't have any reason to stop once you open the book!

Rating:
Summary: Overall, the book was a suspenseful thriller.
Review: Mortal Fear was a great suspense book. You never knew what was going to happen next. Robin Cook is a great author. He knows just how to get a reader's attention. He describes the characters in the book so vividly. You really understand and know about each character. The only complaint I have is the book jumped around too much. In the beginning of the book it all flowed together, but once uou got to the middle, it started to get off track. At one point, Doctor Howard was in Boston, but as you kept reading, you later found out he was in Seattle and not in Boston. That was totally confusing.

Rating:
Summary: Mortal Fear: Excellent!
Review: One of Cook's less famous books, a fantastic blend of medicine and terror. I enjoyed just as well as any of his other novels, if you like Cook, you will like Mortal Fear!

Rating:
Summary: This IS the Weakest Link
Review: This is the most disappointing Robin Cook novel I've read. The novel's protagonist, internest Dr. Jason Howard, is a middle-aged widower who sold his practice and signed a contract with an HMO organization after his wife's death. Unfortunately, this backstory is the most interesting part of the novel. The premise is smart, but the plotting is inexplicably weak. Howard is a nice, hardworking, affable doctor who contends with the plethora of daily outpatients in an HMO-owned facility. Suddenly, a colleague invites him to dinner, says he discovered something incredibly and then dies. The reader is then thrust into the story. The villain is sorrily predictable. Once you read the description of this character in the early part of the book, it's obvious that they're the evil mastermind behind Howard's colleague's demise and the strange course of events that follow. The most interesting character in the novel is Carol Donner, an exotic dancer who had a fling with said dead colleague. She's fascinating, but little is revealed about her and you wonder why she's there at all.

I've been thrilled with the Cook books I've read. If you are too, do yourself a favor and stay away from this one.