โ Scribed by Robin Cook
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Cook constructs a promising yet ultimately wearying plot around the issue of therapeutic cloning, picking up where his last novel, Shock, left off. Readers are once again privy to the morally questionable goings on at the Wingate Infertility Clinic in the Bahamas, but its doctors are side players here. Leading the action is former Harvard biotech ace Daniel Lowell, who has formed his own company to investigate a cloning technique in which a patient with an incurable disease is returned to health through the injection of stem cells. In this case the disease is Parkinson's, and the patient is Ashley Butler, a conservative U.S. senator from the South. For political reasons, Butler opposes the legalization of Lowell's technique. Yet Butler-given about a year to live-is willing to switch sides if Lowell agrees to try out the treatment on him first. The kicker is that the fundamentalist Butler wants the stem cells injected into his brain to come from a very specific source: the Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Cook provides plenty of action as well as polemical asides about the ethics of cloning (he believes politics intrudes far too often into medical and biotech issues), yet readers waiting for a jolt or a revelation will be disappointed. Cook occasionally lets loose the propulsive narrative force that characterizes his best work, but much of the plot is stale and contrived. Readers will have to endure characters who fail to stir emotions (such as a band of corny mobsters), as well as descriptions of Bahamanian resorts that read like paid promotional material.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Cook's latest medical thriller centers around two men--Daniel Lowell, a brilliant researcher, and Ashley Butler, a powerful southern senator. Daniel and his girlfriend, Stephanie D'Agostino, are the cofounders of CURE, a medical research company, the existence of which relies heavily on biotechnology legislation that Butler is trying to block. However, he has an ulterior motive: he is suffering from Parkinson's disease and wants Daniel to treat him using cloned cells. Daniel and Stephanie are taken aback, since their procedure has yet to get FDA approval, meaning they would have to do the surgery in another country. And they're shocked to learn that Butler wants the cells taken not from a donor but from the infamous Shroud of Turin. He puts Daniel and Stephanie in contact with the unscrupulous doctors at the Wingate Clinic (last seen in Cook's previous novel, Shock [2001]) in Nassau. But before they can go to the Wingate to prepare for the procedure, Daniel and Stephanie must go to Turin, to retrieve a piece of the Shroud. Cook is at his best when focusing on fascinating, cutting-edge biotechnology procedures. Kristine Huntley
Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved
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