Host by Robin Cook, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Lynn Pierce is a fourth year medical student at Mason-Dixon University School of Medicine in Charleston, South Carolina. After graduation, she plans on marrying the love of her life, Carl Vandermeer. But right now, Carl is having problems with his knee, and she persuades him to have surgery at her hospital; she even recommends the perfect doctor. Little did she expect that she would never see Carl whole again, in Host, a medical thriller by Robin Cook.

Carl falls into a coma following surgery. An MRI reveals he is brain dead. She's given the official diagnosis, but doesn't believe it, convinced there is more to what happened than she's being told. Together with Carl's best friend and fellow student Michael Pender, Lynn begins to search for evidence of medical error or malpractice. They violate hospital rules by examining the charts of others who fell into comas following surgery and discover an unusually high rate of unexplained complications for patients of Middleton Healthcare, of which Mason-Dixon is a member. They being aggressively questioning anyone involved and are threatened with expulsion from the university, and even receive death threats. But that doesn't stop them. They soon learn of a connection between the Schapiro Institute, where the comatose patients are taken for "recovery", and Sidereal Pharmaceuticals, a drug company backed by a Russian billionaire. But what the end game here is unknown to them.

Host is a thrilling novel featuring two strongly written and developed protagonists. The plot is rather hard to follow at times, and seems a bit formulaic in places, but does move along quickly. The book is quite long, and probably could easily have been trimmed, but overall it is a dynamic, exciting read.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Host.

Cell
Putnam (Hardcover), February 2014
ISBN-13: 9780399166303; ISBN-10: 0399166300

Host

A Medical Thriller by Robin Cook