Ryan+M

=Ryan M's Critical 9th Grade Book Review=

**Crisis By Robin Cook**
This book is about a crisis, of the medical kind. It starts off slower than molasses, with a very slow build, and lots of character development. It stars Dr. Craig Bowman, who after divorcing his wife, is out on concierge medicine. Soon after he runs off with his assistant, he is called out to a "problem patient's" home the home of Patience Stanhope, a hypochondriac woman with many aliments. When Patience Stanhope dies suddenly from a heart attack, Dr. Bowman is charged with a malpractice suit brought on by Jordan Stanhope, the patient's husband. Dr. Bowman's narcissistic personality gets in the way of his defense and his wife Alexis, calls on her estranged brother Jack, a medical examiner in New York, to come and help with the investigation. When Jack arrives,he is immediately curious about the circumstances Patience die under, and asks to do an autopsy. Then all hell breaks loose. As he dives more and more into the facts about it, they are stranger than fiction, and it turns into looking more like a homicide investigation, instead of malpractice. On top of it all the group that has allegedly murdered Patience is threating Craig and his family, even to the point of breaking into Craig's house and assaulting his children, leaving them with the message "No autopsy, or we'll be back". This only pushes Jack to get the autopsy done as soon as he can because he has a deadline -- the Friday of the week of the trial he is to be married in New York,to the love of his life, for the second time after losing his wife and kids in a car crash. As the trial draws near, Jack discovers something that throws the case out the window. He finds extremely high amounts of a certain drug, that induces heart attacks inside of Patience Stanhope, he immediately takes it to the judge, and the trial is declared null and void and must go through it again, with new suspects. Craig and Jordan as murderers.
 * Plot and Summary**

Overall this is very good book and i would recommend it to all that need or like medical dramas in their lives. Although its starts off as a slow boil, it picks up the pace greatly toward which i would consider the end of the second act, where it start to occur to Jack that this isn't only malpractice. All the characters are described in moderate detail, so you can get an idea of what the look like, but nothing specific. Where this book really shines is in its dialog. Admittedly, it uses some very large medical terms which turn even me to a dictionary to figure out what they were saying in some parts of the book, but its very descriptive of the patients problems, and all the secnario's that could possibly be happening. It was like watching a episode of House complete with depressed narcissistic main character that relies on others to help him out even though hes a genius. Jack truly even though he was technically the side character, was the main character in my opinion. He was basically the main focus of the book after the first act, because of the autopsy he needed to perform. I wasn't happy about the big reveal that this was a homicide instead of a mistake. The build up was great but the reveal was a let down, and almost made me drop the book and never open it again, but Robin Cook placed it so strategically it was at the basic end of the book, and you couldn't do much but finish it, since the end was only a mere 45 pages away. Also, this apparently is a series, so read from the beginning,m because it leaves off in a cliffhanger to lead onto another book,(one i won't be reading i might add). Even though the book had a very nice plot, the characters were believable,and spoke with a very high dialect, the description for some things was lacking alot, and the dialog basically carried the book. My personal preference for books is to have alot of detail, so i can be immersed in as book, believe im actually there. //Crisis// did not do that for me, so i can't really rate it as high as some people might believe it to be. the book basically breaks down into 50% planning to do stuff, 20% action, 30% relationships, so its a kinda touchy feelly book. I would give it a 7/10 on a ten scale, and 3/5 on a five scale. Its shines in some places, but lacks overall drive and prowess.
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