Contagion

Cook, Robin

3.97

14,795 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 1559273623 ISBN 13: 9781559273626

Publisher: Macmillan Audio, 1996

After losing his Midwestern ophthalmology practice to a for-profit medical giant, and then his family to a commuter airline tragedy, Dr. John Stapleton's life is in ashes. Abandoning his home and practice, Stapleton retrains as a medical examiner and relocates to a city that suits his changed perspective: the cold concrete maze of New York City.

Stapleton thinks he is past pain and past caring, but as a series of lethal illneses -- capped by a particularly deadly outbreak of a rare strain of influenza -- strikes the young, the old and the innocent, his suspicions are aroused. And when the apparent epicenter of these outbreaks is revealed to be a hospital controlled by the same for-profit giant that cannibalized his old ophthalmology practice, Stapleton fears he has stumbled upon a conspiracy of catastrophic proportions.

Solving the mystery leads to his unlikely pairing, both professionally and personally, with Terese Hagen, an art director at a hot Madison Avenue advertising firm. And as he gets closer to discovering the real explanation behind the killer contagions, he finds his life is on the line -- for there are those who will pay any price to keep the diabolical truth from being revealed.

Contagion anticipates some of the uncharted consequences of managed health care, in an age when even the wariest consumer may be at risk. It is a terrifying cautionary tale for the millennium, as health-care giants collide. It is Robin Cook at his unerring best.

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Review:

When not one but three different extremely rare diseases kill several patients at a New York hospital, forensic pathologist Jack Stapleton suspects it's more than just coincidence. He thinks there's a connection between the appearance of the mysterious microbes responsible for the deaths and the HMO that owns the hospital--the same HMO that once destroyed his flourishing medical practice. Is Americare deliberately killing off its sickest patients--those who cost the most money to treat? Or is there an even more sinister motive behind the strange goings-on at Manhattan General, not to mention the attempts on Jack's life? And what is beautiful Terese Hagen, the hard-driving creative director of a Madison Avenue ad agency, doing in the middle of this slightly muddled, but still engrossing, tale of greed, medicine, and mayhem? Like Michael Crichton, whose Andromeda Strain remains the classic in the genre, Cook is sometimes heavy-handed when it comes to character development, and his fulminations about the dangers of managed care often get in the way of the plot. Still, Contagion will make you think twice about taking your next case of flu to the ER instead of your own bed. --Jane Adams

About the Author:

Robin Cook is a graduate of Columbia University medical school, and finished his postgraduate training at Harvard. He is currently on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He lives and works in Florida. Joe Mantegna's acting credits are long and impressive. He's appeared in over 100 films, including Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Godfather Part 3, Celebrity, Forget Paris, and Liberty Heights. On television, he played in the award-winning TV movie The Rat Pack and The Last Don. He's also been seen in the critically-acclaimed series Joan of Arcadia, The Starter Wife, and Criminal Minds. Joe's many audiobook credits include Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Robin Cook's Contagion, and James Patterson's Judge & Jury, among others.

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