Robin Cook’s 25th novel, MARKER, is the one of the fantastic medical fiction, dealing with lethal play on human's life with lots of actions packed with unexpected twists in the story, which would keep the readers spellbound and rapt with the happenings.
The Story begins with a broken relationship between Dr. Laurie Montgomery and Dr. Jack Stapleton working as medical examiners at OCME, when Jack, who loves Laurie, shows no commitment towards having a family with her due to the tragedy that struck his life in the past. With numerous vicissitudes and with her personal life on rocks, Laurie gets attracted towards the sudden deaths of patients whom she had autopsied lately. She finds that couple of healthy young man/women die of sudden cardiac arrest after what seems to be a simple minor surgery and when kept under observation, leaving no clue behind the nature of death and all postmortem reports gives no lead. Laurie gets more intrigued when she sees such kind of deaths increasingly happening to healthy patients , within twenty fours hours after their post-operation at Manhattan General Hospital, having no previous medical history whatsoever, which makes her deem that the deaths are somewhat connected and it’s an act of a devious serial-killer.
With lot of pressure from her superiors, who don’t want this news of her homicide theory hitting the media with her exiguous data and with no one believing her story, including Jack, she finds it hard to move on with her investigation, until she finds hope and support from Roger, the chief of the medical staff from the Manhattan General Hospital and with whom she shares a brief affair. Things take a positive turn for Laurie, when she discovers that similar series of death had occurred in St.Francis hospital too, but during different time period, and these evidences clearly states that the person involved in both the killings is the same. Meanwhile, Jasmine Rakoczi (known as Jazz), who is the nurse in the Manhattan General Hospital, carries out her mission of “sanctioning” selected patients, who is referred to her, by her boss Mr. Bob whose original identity is not revealed to her, using an undetectable killing agent. Hell breaks loose for her, when Roger investigates and comes up with the short-listed names of potential candidates of his prime suspect in the killing, including Jazz and interrogates her. Infuriated that Roger might blow her mission, Jazz kills him and when Laurie gets his headless and handless corpse for examination at the OCME, she grieves with guilt as she feels she is responsible for his death by involving him into this muddle. With Jack now supporting her with her conviction, Laurie seems indefatigable in her pursuit of finding the killer.
Her worst nightmares begin when Laurie herself had to be admitted at the Manhattan General Hospital for an immediate surgery and Jazz had to sanction her next. Jack when runs around to match the missing pieces of the jig-saw puzzle, is shocked when he finds that Laurie resulting positive to BCRA1 – a marker for genetic mutation leading to Breast Cancer, is the key to the serial killing and is constrained with time to save her when she has already got into the hands of the killer with no aid for escapism, ensconce the readers with an electric edge-of-the-seat finale. Is Laurie able to save herself from the brutal clutches of Jazz is crux of the climax and makes the book an interesting and electrifying read.
Robin Cook has understood clearly the plot of the story and with his in-depth knowledge of medicine has used the back drop of hospital to cultivate his latest novel and has expertly juxtaposed Laurie’s personal battle over her ruptured relation with Jack against her professional battle over the suspense of the series of 'unexplained deaths' around her and her indomitable spirit of investigation to unravel the plot.
The master of the medical thriller has made our hearts pound with yet another gripping story.
No comments:
Post a Comment