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POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD: READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION
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The medical thriller takes on MRSA--you knew it was going to happen at some point. I guessed early on that there had to be a way it was being introduced. It was just too widespread and they were doing too much to try to prevent it for it to have been anything else. I didn't guess who or why until it was revealed.

I'm not sure what I feel about the specialty hospital. In one sense, it was taking advantage of a loophole in the law (which makes me think it was somewhat wrong). It almost seemed like they wanted to pick and choose their patients--nothing too difficult, nothing that would take up a lot of their time, nothing that wouldn't pay well. To be fair, there were other hospitals nearby so it wasn't like this was the only place for care and they were turning away people who really needed help and had no where else to go. Angela seems more concerned with the bottom line than with the people--she'll close the ORs to get them fumigated so she can say she's doing what the infection control people tell her to do but won't close them down long-term because of the loss of revenue that would result. I honestly don't see what Chet saw in her.

It did also seem strange to me that Jack could get his surgery scheduled so quickly. That rarely happens in real life--at least not around here.

I haven't read other books in this series, but there is much made of the mobsters past history with Laurie. I guess that is the reason they were included in this book because otherwise mobsters and a medical thriller don't necessarily equate in my mind.

I also kind of felt like the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing and they got in each other's ways. The MRSA group calls in a soldier of fortune to eliminate Laurie because they fear she will expose them. The hospital group backers (one group of the mob) have a personal history with Laurie and want her removed not only because of that but because she could blow the lid on the hospital and jeopardize the IPO. They both try to go after Laurie and get in each other's ways. A second mob family ends up watching the first--a good thing for Laurie that they are. ( )

Just trying to fill in a lot of the Robin Cook books I have missed--and MRSA no less---having experienced it in our family this audio version was even more interesting. George Guidall has done several of his audios and is terrific. ( )

This the 7th book in the Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton series was both good, and disappointing.

It was good in that the topic of mysterious MRSA infections at three hospitals and the subsequent investigations were interesting and the side plots kept you both interested and intrigued.

The was disappointing in that Jack's role in the book was a little out of character, normally pessimistic about large corporations & hospitals and suspicious of their motives he was basically rushing in to put his life in danger at one of the hospitals with frequent MRSA outbreaks. It just didn't mesh with his character traits from previous books.

In recent books Robin Cook has also become more "preachy" with plot lines highlighting what he views as a shortcoming in modern medicine and/or hospital funding, in this case it was specialist hospitals being allowed to siphon off profitable cases and skimp expensive long term cases. This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, and in some ways it is beneficial that someone is doing something about the worsening situation however it could perhaps be toned down a little.

If able to overlook the above limitations it was however an overall enjoyable book. ( )

Yet another of Cook's diatribes about the evils of combining money with medicine. In case anyone missed the point in his previous half-dozen books, Cook lays out his morality with all the subtlety of Joan Rivers on speed. What I learned from this book are that doctors are either brilliant, altruistic humanitarians or complete bastards, Italians (at least American ones) are either slovenly but good-hearted cops or dim-witted but dangerous gangsters and anyone who ever even thought about making a profit from medicine is evil incarnate.

These days Cook's characters are so poorly developed and one-dimensional, his stories so contrived and unbelievable and his dialogue so unrealistic that the only sane response is to laugh out loud. Critical has competing assasins, anthropomorphised bacteria with attitude, plot holes you could drive a truck through and more homilies per chapter than you'd find in a bible studies tract.

I ploughed through to the end because (a) I didn't have any other books with me and (b) I rather hoped Laurie or Jack might die slowly and painfully in the never-ending battle between mobsters, mysterious hired killers and deadly bacteria thereby preventing a future outing for these increasingly annoying characters. Alas t'was not to be.

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