I picked up this (audio)book while waiting for the one I really wanted to read, Pandemic. It has not been easy. I thought that this was a departure for Robin Cook, and read reviews that agreed with me, but when I reviewed the 35 odd books that Robin Cook has written, I realized that I haven't read that many, and what I read was a very long time ago.
Coma was old paperback copies when I read it, but that was still back in the 1990s when Kevin Bacon played a medical resident in Flatliners. I would have to look at the stories of Fever, Outbreak, and Vital Signs to be sure I actually read them. For me, Robin Cook was a master of medical thrillers, but maybe I didn't read that many of them!
Fast forward to this week, and I found myself reacting badly to the unsympathetic character that leads the story. His idyllic life falls apart when his wife contracts "EEE" on the beach at Cape Cod, and his low budget insurance plan becomes a looming debt that he cannot pay. It should be a tragedy, but his egocentric brain carries on without feeling any human emotions of grief and loss, he outsources his sick daughter to a variety of women, including strangers that are all more than eager to serve his needs for free, and he gets angry at every turn of events, bordering on entitled rage with every emergency encounter.
It drove me nuts!
The reader of the audiobook made a few mistakes, calling Ver-sed "Versed", and the French patient was called the male french version Jean when it was supposed to be Jeanne. (True, Jean in English as a female sounds like denim, but you still have to say the -n at the end when you say it in French!) The accent varied too much for me, and I would expect that any French speaker who repeatedly used the colloquial word "shannanigans" may not be speaking with an accent. Similarly, he assumed the American ER doc who has a Sikh name had an East Indian (?Irish) accent, when it was more likely he talked like an American, because he was!
I kept waiting for the husband to find out that his wife's cardiac arrest was a medical error, with Versed 5 then 10 mg more in keeping with Valium doses, and possibly the reason she died, and not the seizure. Alas, that was not the plot twist.
I have great sympathy for the writing of a bad book. Even that takes a monumental effort. I wondered if at age 80, we are seeing the cognitive decline expected of the age or if a ghost writer was writing their first attempt at a copy cat (the name Robin Cook, like Robert Ludlum, is a brand unto itself). The prose was tediously repetitive, and the story read like a report, with no plot, no tension (except for the toxicity that emanated from the un-woke immature man that unfortunately talked the entire time), and no complexity of emotion or normal life. Characters were one dimensional, and the ideas were pat (no charge, everyone perfectly followed the covid precautions, a woman hired for her business savvy and another who was a total stranger were used as caregivers with the father oscillating between overreaction to neglect of his daughter, and in total denial of the needs of his family, colleagues and himself. If this was the tragedy, I could accept it as a character flaw, but it seemed that the author was unaware that a father could feel emotion, and make decisions that would acknowledge the feelings and needs of others, and not only himself.
What is the worst, SPOILER ALERT, this is a story of an angry shallow man who rages his way through the health care system, and repeatedly assaults health care workers verbally and then physically. His behaviour, while understandable to be inappropriate given the circumstances, is unchecked and totally inappropriate. The doctor's response of ambivalence is unlikely, given assault is uncommon, and would not be tolerated. Brian's misguided rage has no insight into what the real issue was, and his - this grief is terrible because it is no one's fault. This reality never even comes up.
The coming reality of mosquito borne disease in the ongoing climate changes, and the inequity of for-profit health care are real issues that bear discussing. Vigilante justice and the unlikely escape of the law is unacceptable, and unchecked misguided rage and assault are serious issues, and not to be romanticized and oversimplified, as in this book.
I don't recommend this book, and give it a 1/5.
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