CRITICAL by Robin Cook

I. Preface

Bobbie Sellers wrote:

Don wrote:

<snip>

>
Robin Cook's mentioned at the reddit link. My followup pertains to Cook.
>
Edgar Allan Poe (EAP) invented the detective genre. EAP's sleuth took
the form of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, who triumphed through
thoughtfulness. Dupin believed the game of chess suitable for
developing mental prowess.
>
EAP nemesis Arthur Conan Doyle followed in Poe's footsteps. Doyle
projected his own drug use into Holmes to twist Poe's clear thinking
detective into mysticism. The Poe-Doyle nexus will be covered by me in
the future.

>
       Well I find your logic flawed as he was writing about
his mentor in Medical School who used science as tool in detection.
Whether or not that mentor used stimulants is a open question
but the detective he wrote about only used cocaine when he was
bored by the lack of interesting crimes to investigate.

Here's a sneak preview - a teaser to tide you over until my article
appears about the Poe-Doyle nexus. Canon Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes
novel, A STUDY IN SCARLET, resolutely rejects ratiocination. The excerpt
below shows Canon-Doyle's pathetic attempt to try to belittle Dupin's
disciplined deliberations:

    "Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. "No doubt you think that
    you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin," he observed.
    "Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That
    trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an
    apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really
    very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no
    doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared
    to imagine."

    <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/244/244-h/244-h.htm>

========================================================================

II. CRITICAL by Robin Cook

This is the seventh installment of the Jack Stapleton / Laurie
Montgomery series. Jack and Laurie both work "down in the pit" (the
autopsy room) as medical examiners at the Office of the Chief Medical
Examiner in Manhattan.
    At times it's prone to be a political place, particularly in high
profile cases - deaths with enough celebrity involvement, scandalous
stink, or the like, to attract mass media attention.

Synopsis:

    In 1977 Robin Cook’s second book, COMA, catapulted him into
    the limelight, and he has been a bestselling author ever
    since. He is the "father" of the medical thriller, and his
    27th effort, CRITICAL, is another fast-paced, character-
    driven chiller. This time he challenges the notion of
    "specialized private hospitals" that resemble hotels and
    are stockholder-owned. ...

    (excerpt)

    <https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/critical>



    Angela Dawson, M.D., appears to have it all ...

    Angela founds a start-up, Angels Healthcare, then prepares
    to take it public. With a controlling interest in three
    busy specialty hospitals in New York City and plans for
    others in Miami and Los Angeles, the future looks very
    bright for her. Confident in her abilities as both doctor
    and businesswoman, and virtually assured of finally
    controlling her own destiny, Angela is on the verge of
    seeing her ambitions fulfilled.

    But then a surge of drug-resistant staph infections in all
    three hospitals devastates Angela's carefully constructed
    world. Not only do the infections result in deaths of
    patients but the fatalities cause a serious cash-flow
    problem, which puts her company's imminent IPO in jeopardy.

    (excerpt)

    <https://robincook.com/product/critical>

Review:

CRITICAL follows formula and thereby satisfies me as a Cook fan. The
author uses a Dupinesque discipline to methodically manufacture make
believe. Here's part of the process employed to cook up (so to speak)
best sellers:
'
    I plan very carefully. I make extensive outlines on large
    pieces of paper, with tiny writing, so I can get as much
    on that paper as possible, and then I draw arrows and move
    things around. If I learned anything in college, going back
    to the beginning of the computer age and learning how to
    program computers, I learned that you had to know exactly
    where you were going. I apply that same sort of methodology
    to planning a book. I didn't outline my first book very well,
    but I outlined Coma extremely well so that when I started
    writing, I knew everything that was going to happen. That's
    how I've continued to write my books. If I was a more trained
    writer, I might not have to outline as much as I do.

    <https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/5iLJ9YOIReV6YLhVtLFLTV>

* * * Spoiler * * *


At long last we finally arrive at the hard science part of the story.
It pertains to how methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

    can invade and multiply within acanthamoeba, similar to
    legionella, the cause of Legionnaire's disease. Since
    acanthamoeba normally eat bacteria, it is interesting to
    wonder how the MRSA and legionella have developed
    antiamoebic resistance, if you will, and how molecularly
    similar the process is to their antibiotic resistance.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.     https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'    Make 1984 fiction again.