Rating: 
Summary: Cotton Candy Fiction
Review: "Fatal Cure" is a quick read. There's no depth of character to slow the reader; but the plot weaves as pages turn. Dr. Angela Wilson is a pathologist who does not like her boss touching her on the derriere or pulling her onto his lap for a peek at the microscope, a scientific lap dance. When she complains about sexual harassment, her boss suddenly gets upset with her. Then when a dead body of the former hospital administrator is found in her basement requiring continual absences from work, she gets fired! Where is CSI Vermont!?! ... This book was fun because something was always happening. It was also frustrating because the characters lacked perception. This is a fast read that's fiction's nutritional equivalent to cotton candy. A definite maybe!
Rating:
Summary: Not the real world
Review: I enjoyed reading the book because it did have a good idea behind it. What bothered me, though, was how unrealistic the main characters' responses were to what happened to them. What got me the most was when the two characters that the family and the little girl were supposedly so close to died, they didn't even contact their families or attend their funerals! PLEASE! At least mention it in the book for 5 seconds so that we know that you have at least a slight grasp of what would really happen! No wonder everyone in Barlet hated them!!
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Awful
Review: I'm sure you've read the plot synopsis by now, so I'll skip it and get to the real review. This book is a long, contrived, boring piece of unrealistic drivel. This guy went to Harvard? It reads like an Encyclopedia Brown mystery, except you figure it all out much quicker. The characters are underdeveloped and frighteningly unrealistic (not to mention just plain stupid. It took them 400 pages to figure out what was going on? Maybe they went to Harvard, too). Evidently, in Dr. Cook's world nobody ever utters an obscenity or does anything risque or more involved than "making love." We get pages and pages about a man having an affair with his business associate, been when it comes to the pivotal moment the experience is summed up in two words. Sounds like Cook is as prudish as his main characters. Skip this book unless you enjoy mind-bogglingly bad literature (a la "Mystery Science Theater 3000", perhaps). This is my first, and last, Robin Cook novel.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Awful
Review: I'm sure you've read the plot synopsis by now, so I'll skip it and get to the real review. This book is a long, contrived, boring piece of unrealistic drivel. This guy went to Harvard? It reads like an Encyclopedia Brown mystery, except you figure it all out much quicker. The characters are underdeveloped and frighteningly unrealistic (not to mention just plain stupid. It took them 400 pages to figure out what was going on? Maybe they went to Harvard, too). Evidently, in Dr. Cook's world nobody ever utters an obscenity or does anything risque or more involved than "making love." We get pages and pages about a man having an affair with his business associate, been when it comes to the pivotal moment the experience is summed up in two words. Sounds like Cook is as prudish as his main characters. Skip this book unless you enjoy mind-bogglingly bad literature (a la "Mystery Science Theater 3000", perhaps). This is my first, and last, Robin Cook novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Reviving the fear of hospitals...
Review: Robin Cook is just one of those authors that you just love to read when you want to be slightly amused. This book gets you going and revives that fear of hospitals and doctors. Keeps you on the edge of your seat. If you don't read much of his work, this would be one to read!
Rating: 
Summary: A polemic against HMO's--oh, and there's a story, too
Review: Robin Cook's "Fatal Cure" is more of the same from this best-selling author. As is standard, Cook takes a development in health care that is disturbing and expands it into fantastic proportions. In this case, the disturbing element is the increased emphasis on cost at the expense of patients' health--all courtesy of HMO's."Fatal Cure" tells the story of two young doctors (Angela and David Wilson) who move to an idyllic Vermont town when they are able to land jobs, one at a hospital and another working for the only HMO in the area. David's patients begin dying at an alarming rate, and the deaths defy diagnosis. At the same time, they turn up the body of a doctor in their basement. The dead man had disappeared relatively recently, and the Wilsons (Angela, especially, as she becomes obsessed with the matter) seek to unravel the mystery surrounding his death. Their efforts, however, do not please the town, which responds with threats, vandalism, and hostility. And as if these two problems are not enough, there's the rapist who has been claiming victims in the hospital's parking lots. The story is thoroughly transparent, and while the precise identity of the culprit might not be obvious, the reasons behind and causes of the patients' mysterious deaths should not be any surprise (and shouldn't have been a surprise to the Wilsons). The lack of surprise is due largely to the transparency of Cook's political message. The characters' motivations do not seem to be entirely consistent with reality, especially as the two young doctors repeatedly endanger their daughter's life by taking her into high-risk situations. Angela, for example, takes the girl with her when she goes in search of her missing husband rather than leaving the child with her grandparents. That factor, more than the political intrusion, is especially disturbing. Cook does know how to string together dramatic events, but the characters are too dull to figure out what is obvious, and the writing is rather poor. For Cook's fans, though, none of these problems will come as a surprise or present any difficulties. For people in search of realism or intelligent and multi-dimensional characters, look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Cook Must Be Kidding
Review: This book deals with the exciting lives of two doctors and their ill daughter, who move to a new community only to find a dead body in their new house and a town full of secrets. This was a extremely interesting book, with intricate details and an exciting plot. The only drawback to the book was the length. Although the book remained exciting throughout the book, the end could have been tightened to remove unneccesary and sometimes boring information. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the medical field, or anyone who enjoys a good murder mystery!
Rating:
Summary: Great polemic, but he doesn't know Vermont
Review: This is not my favorite Robin Cook novel. Being a native Vermonter I kept being distracted by the fact that the book talked about a Vermont town that simply doesn't exist. It isn't just that it's a fictional town, it's that the setting is totally unreal. It appears to have been written by someone who's seen some Vermont postcards, but never spent any time in the state. There simply aren't places in Vermont where nearby hospitals have been put out of business by HMO's and other hospitals, other than Burlington where the facilities have essentially consolidated. There is no way that Burlington could be mistaken for Cook's setting.The Vermonters in the story don't act like real Vermonters, the yuppie professionals in the story are unrealistic as well. Having said that there are some factual pieces about hospitals forcing doctors out of private practices into hospital controlled practices. The unreality in this story really detracted from the story line as a whole. Also I was perplexed as to why the couple would allow their daughter to be hospitalized in a hospital where patients were dying mysteriously. It isn't like there are no other hospitals in the state. People routinely travel for an hour plus in Vermont to get better medical care than is available locally. All in all the book's polemics were interesting, but the lack of knowledge of the setting and poor character development made it not one of Cook's best. Before he writes about Vermont again he ought to come and live here for 6 months or so.
Rating: 
Summary: This is Robin Cook
Review: This is the kind of books that I like of Dr. Cook, of course I am not a doctor so I don't understand many things about medicine, but this book is definitely a medical thrillers, and as all of his books you will think twice before you go to a doctor or a hospital.
The story of the hospital that want to save money instead of save patients is not out of reality, in other words I can believe that these things could happened in a small town or a place that are not to many hospitals.
It has one or two mistakes with their daughter, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be real.
Rating:
Summary: Preachy as all heck - okay storyline.
Review: While the story line was tolerable and interesting at times, the preachiness of 'educating the reader' about the favorite 'special interest' of the author really comes across to clumsily that it detracts from the overall flow of the book (every few pages there seems to be a jab here and there thrown in to meet some sort of a PSA quota.) The story line is not as good as Toxin, but this title is slightly less offensive in the constant regurgitation of the 'healthcare system= evil' message than it is in Toxin.
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