Booklist Reviews
If Cook's latest were about 75 pages shorter, it might have been a lean, mean medical thriller. As it is, the book feels a bit bloated. Characters tell each other things they probably should already know, for the benefit of the reader. They engage in the kind of small talk that suggests they are generally bad at small talk. The story meanders when it should accelerate. All of which is too bad, really, since the plot, which involves a handful of strange-circumstance deaths, an inquisitive medical examiner (Jack Stapleton, Cook's go-to protagonist), and a rather nasty megalomaniac, is quite interesting. Cook's greatest skill lies in his ability to take some new medical development and build a fictional story around it; that approach tends to bring built-in hooks—here it's gene modification run amok—that the medical-thriller crowd can't resist. Devoted fans will certainly take a bite of this one, too, but the book's excessive wordiness may deter those sampling Cook for the first time. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Cook brand will sell this one, even if the product is not up to par. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.
Library Journal Reviews
A young woman dies on the New York City subway, evidently from a particularly vicious strain of the flu. But the autopsy reveals that she'd had a heart transplant, with her DNA inexplicably matching that of the heart, and after two similar cases, Dr. Jack Stapleton finds himself in the midst of a biotech conspiracy. From the medical thriller master.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal.Publishers Weekly Reviews
When a seemingly healthy woman collapses on a subway train in Manhattan and dies shortly afterward from an unknown cause, New York City medical examiner Jack Stapleton, the hero of this unremarkable thriller from bestseller Cook (