Host by Robin Cook – a Review
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Description:
Lynn Peirce, a fourth-year medical student at South Carolina’s Mason-Dixon University, thinks she has her life figured out. But when her otherwise healthy boyfriend, Carl, enters the hospital for routine surgery, her neatly ordered life is thrown into total chaos. Carl fails to return to consciousness after the procedure, and an MRI confirms brain death.
Devastated by Carl’s condition, Lynn searches for answers. Convinced there’s more to the story than what the authorities are willing to reveal, Lynn uses all her resources at Mason-Dixon—including her initially reluctant lab partner, Michael Pender—to hunt down evidence of medical error or malpractice.
What she uncovers, however, is far more disturbing. Hospitals associated with Middleton Healthcare, including the Mason-Dixon Medical Center, have unnervingly high rates of unexplained anesthetic complications and patients contracting serious and terminal illness in the wake of routine hospital admissions.
When Lynn and Michael begin to receive death threats, they know they’re into something bigger than either of them anticipated. They soon enter a desperate race against time for answers before shadowy forces behind Middleton Healthcare and their partner, Sidereal Pharmaceuticals, can put a stop to their efforts once and for all.
Review:
Host by Robin Cook is another one of his exciting medical thrillers. We meet our heroine, Lynn Peirce, a medical student at Mason-Dixon University, who is in her 4th year. When Lynn’s boyfriend, Carl enters the hospital for a simple surgery on his knee, she goes to see him before going to school. She finds out that her boyfriend is now comatose, and considered brain dead, with no one really sure what happened, other than a blimp on the anesthesia machine.
Michael Pender is Lynn’s friend and also a 4th year medical student at the same school. Together they try to find out what went wrong. Going against all the rules, Lynn and Michael use their being students at the hospital to read the charts, and written explanations from doctors on the case. Before long, they begin to discover that this was not the first unexplained death in the hospital, and many of the complications were very similar. Soon they begin to receive threats of expulsion, and eventually death threats.
Though Michael wants to help Lynn, he fears she is pushing too far, putting herself in danger. Michael agrees to continue to help her, and as findings begin to show a pattern, the danger escalates that will put both of their lives on the line. They discover a conspiracy between the hospital, the Shapiro Institute, where comatose patients are sent, and a drug company that is run by a Russian billionaire. What follows is an extremely exciting, nail biting adventure, with Lynn and Michael on borrowed time, as they venture where they should not have gone, but discover what The Shapiro Institute is really doing.
We hold our breath, as Lynn tries to find someone to help, someone that would believe her, and fast before either her or Michael are killed. This was a very exciting and scary story, which makes us think if being in a hospital is truly a safe place to be. Robin Cook once again gives us a top notch thriller from start to finish. Host was an edge of your seat page turner, and a great read.
Reviewed by Barb
Copy provided by Publisher
