Product Description

A 28-year-old man seems the picture of health, until he fractures his leg while skating in New York’s Central Park. Within twenty-four hours of his surgical treatment he is dead. Next, a 36-year-old mother has knee surgery to repair a torn ligament in her knee - and within twenty-four hours she too has died.

Confronted with a series of puzzling deaths of young, healthy patients after routine treatment, medical examiners Dr. Laurie Montgomery and Dr. Jack Stapleton begin to investigate. Up against resistance from her superiors, and also coping with a personal life that continues to fragment, precipitated by Jack's inability to commit to their relationship, Laurie's need for answers becomes even more urgent. Could all these deaths be intentional? With time winding down, she and Jack embark on a race to connect the dots.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148219 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-06
• Format: Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 360 pages

Peterborough Evening Telegraph
'It ticks all the boxes for being terrifying, keeping you in
suspense and being completely addictive'

About the Author

A bestselling author for many years, Dr. Robin Cook has written twenty-four previous novels. He is currently on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and lives and works in Florida.

Customer Reviews

Business as usual
Oh, for the heady days of Coma, Sphinx and Fever! Cook is back with a "business as usual" medical thriller, Marker. It is not so much disappointing (it is still an enjoyable read)just routine in the way it unfolds. Even the characters - Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery are returning from previous novels. The added spice of their relationship now taking a part in the unfolding action.

Cook spins an abosrbing tale and part of his charm is the mixture of intense medical detail/background with romping yarns of subterfuge and murder. His characters (particularly his female ones) seem to have rather "naff" thought processes and some of the dialogue makes you cringe. But it's fun. Marker hits all these same highs and lows, but there is a terrible sense of "being there before". Some of his more recent novels - particularly Contagion and Vector - have gripped a lot more than this, mainly due to suprising plot turns. Marker have none of these.

Good for the Cook fans, but let's have something a bit different and, hopefully, a bit sooner.

Less is more
Several unexpected deaths of young and seemingly healthy people, in hospital with minor surgeries, catch medical examiner Laurie's attention. She suspects criminal activity and starts looking for clues. Laurie also has problems in her private relationship with colleague Jack. And so the stage is set.

Although "Marker" has a basic plot Robin Cook has used several times before, the main issues, modern health care and medical research, should
have made "Marker" another safe page-turning winner in his authorship.
When they fail to do so, at least partly, it is in my opinion because the book is too long. It starts out very slow, with lots of detailed medical terms, boring to people with no medical background. As the story unfolds, it does improve but very slowly. Actually, it's not until very late in the book that the story comes to life, and the last third is in fact of unputdownable quality.

To me an extensive edit of the first two thirds of the book, cutting down on medical terms and explanations as well as other repetitious and tedious information, would bring the story to life and catch the readers' attention from the very beginning.

One thing is a big improvement in this book. Cook has in previous works had a tendency to use rather "flat" language, with little linguistic variation. The prose in "Marker" is excellent. Just a little bit less of it, and five stars would have been a given.

A MEDICAL THRILLER WITH SOCIAL COMMENTARY...
This novel sees the return of New York City medical examiner, Laurie Montgomery, and NYPD homicide detective, Lou Saldano, to whom I was first introduced in the author's medical mystery thriller, "Blindsight". This pretty much follows the formula in that book.

Here, young, reasonably healthy adults enter the hospital for seemingly routine minor surgery and end up dying while hospitalized. Our intrepid medical examiner senses that there is something wrong afoot, as she takes notice of this but cannot initially ascertain what the problem is. As the death toll mounts up, Laurie knows that the law of probability is against these deaths being accidental. She thinks that there is a serial killer afoot, but she does not know how or why. More galling to her is the fact that no one seems to share her concerns initially, although she does confide her concerns to Detective Saldano. Unfortunately, his hands are tied, because the medical examiner's office is not classifying these deaths as homicides.

Set against the backdrop of this medical conundrum is the personal angst Laurie is suffering because of the reluctance of Jack Stapleton, her long term significant other and fellow medical examiner, to commit to marrying her and having children. Since Laurie is forty three and her biological clock is in countdown mode, she won't take no for an answer this time. Consequently, she and Jack seem to be going their separate ways, and Laurie meets up with a another doctor, one who is in a successful private practice and seems smitten by Laurie.

The author weaves a fine plot, even though the author's cookie-cutter characters and limp dialogue leave something to be desired. The reader will know who the killer is relatively early, but why the killings are taking place is what is at the heart of this book. Still, the clever plot will keep the reader eagerly turning the pages of this book. Although though the discerning reader will probably solve the mystery long before Laurie and Lou do so, the plot will still keep the reader turning the pages of this entertaining, quick read. The book is also a social commentary on the evils inherent in managed health care.