Terminal

by Robin Cook

Overview

“Like a runaway locomotive—a manically entertaining thriller. Robin Cook knows how to make the pages fly.”—Kirkus Reviews

At a prestigious Florida medical center, brain cancer patients are treated with a 100% success rate. Sean Murphy, a young medical student, finds it hard to believe. Is it a miracle cure? Or the biggest con job in the history of medicine?

As Sean delves deeper into the mystery, he begins to uncover secrets that get at the heart of a nearly unbelievable conspiracy he never could have imagined...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425155066
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/1996
Series:	A Medical Thriller
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	4.18(w) x 6.72(h) x 0.99(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robin Cook, M.D., is the author of more than thirty books and is credited with popularizing the medical thriller with his wildly successful first novel, Coma. He divides his time among Florida, New Hampshire, and Boston. His most recent novels include Host, Cell, and Nano.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A spellbinder." —The Houston Chronicle

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Robin Cook and Terminal:

“A spellbinder.”—The Houston Chronicle

“Like a runaway locomotive—a manically entertaining thriller. Robin Cook knows how to make the pages fly.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Straight out of today's headlines.”—UPI

From the Publisher

Sean Murphy, a third-year medical student at Harvard, has gone down to the Forbes Cancer Center in Florida to do a two-month project. The rough-edged South Boston Irishman, however, really wants to find out more about the center's remarkable cure rate for patients with medulloblastomas. His girlfriend, nurse Janet Reardon, follows him south. Robert Harris, Forbes' chief security officer, takes an immediate dislike to Sean, with his long hair and smart-ass attitude, but ultimately helps save the day (and the lives of both Janet and Sean). Dr. Deborah Levy, director of research, blasts in and out of the picture and turns out to be the second cleverest character on the scene. The most unusual individual involved is a housekeeper, Tom Widdicomb, who has been putting women cancer patients out of their misery with the unspoken advice of his frigid mother (she's in a freezer in the family garage). Cook tells a beautifully woven story--keeping the various individuals and plots in meaningful operation--and winds up with a dramatic hostage-and-research denouement.

William Beatty

No other bestselling author crunches the language quite like Cook, but he does know how to make his pages fly—which is what made last year's dull Blindsight so unforgivable. Not so this newest, which finds Cook back on track—like a runaway locomotive—with a manically entertaining thriller. Sean Murphy is a brash son of Boston's Irish ghetto, a reformed thief whose brains have gotten him into Harvard Med. Now Sean's heading for Miami's Forbes Cancer Center, which has a mysterious 100% success rate treating medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer. Once south, though, Sean finds that the Center's head, Randolph Mason, wants him to work not on the "medulloblastoma protocol" but on crystallizing "murine monoclonal antibodies" (Cook pours on the medical know-how here). Moreover, Janet Reardon, the nurse/lover Sean dumped in Boston, has followed Sean to Forbes. But never mind: Sean decides to steal Forbes's research and give it to the world, and to enlist Janet's help. When Forbes's Japanese backers learn of Sean's aim, though, they send an assassin after him; but the killer has to get in line behind the p.i. that Mason has hired to look into Sean, and the Nazi-like head of Forbes security—not to mention Forbes's resident orderly/serial-killer (no threat to Hannibal Lecter, though he does keep his dead mom in a freezer) who's been "liberating" patients, and who decides that Janet is on to him. A madcap chase to Key West and back winds up with Sean taking Mason hostage. Will a SWAT team neutralize Sean before he can prove that the medulloblastoma protocol is key to an evil scheme to fund the money-starved Clinic? All this antic action, and a Message about the financialplight of medical research too: So what if Janet finds her heart "pounding and knowing her face is flushed"? Chalk up another big one for Cook. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for Winter)

Kirkus Reviews