Inextricable truth. Review on Contagion - Robin Cook

From the renowned author of science fiction comes yet another exceedingly gripping book-Contagion.

You need to acquire a taste for these science fiction books. Not everyone gets to be a fan of these series. I remember beginning to read ‘outbreak’ and couldn’t go past 15 pages. This one is a masterpiece. The way the plot unfolds, the narration the characterization everything is superlative.

Hospitals… autopsies… micro labs… street kids… advertising world… health care multi nationals… histology… microbes… Blacks called ‘dons’ or better put as henchmen… detectives… local shoot outs….excrutiating pain…infectious deaths and murders…and tons of sinister plans….

If you do not despise any of these, this book is assured to please you.

The plot:

Jack Stapleton, an ophthalmologist has his practice disrupted by Americare, a healthcare conglomerate. He preferred quitting of his job to subduing to a multi national giant, and became a medical examiner. The prime events of his day included, getting into scrubs, going into the pit and performing autopsies. His life took one major turn when he lost his wife and 2 kids in an airplane accident. He was devastated and became completely withdrawn from the rest of the world. He cut all social contact and began living in a dingy locale. He tries to find solace in his work- forensic pathology, having moved to the cold indifferent maze of New York.

Plague, tularemia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and primary influenza pneumonia all noscomial infections break out in a hospital in an inexplicable way and that’s when Jack knows something is not right. That’s when he turns from a medical examiner to a sleuth.

Four virulent, lethal and very rare diseases spreading in the city striking young and old alike and the illness emanating in the General hospital. Phew that is a scary scary thought.

These outbreaks bothered jack a lot as he wasn’t able to arrive at any conclusion. They did not strike a particular age group of victims, they did not occur at a particular section of the hospital, one was air borne, one was from infected rodents, one was similar the outbreak in 1918.all the victims were admitted into the hospital for an entirely different treatment and showed symptoms of these diagnosed infections only after coming to the general hospital and they died soon after.

What amazed jack even more was the cold treatment given to him by the managing heads of the hospital every time he was there to check up on the issue and gather information.

Was it them? Incidentally, the general hospital was run by the same healthcare conglomerate- Americare, the one responsible for jack’s loss of job.

Was americare forcefully and ruthlessly getting rid of their costly patients in a crude way? Was it the managing heads who were planting these viruses?

The idea of deliberate spread has to be considered when the possibility of chance is negligible.

Everytime jack was in their labs, checking their cultures and trying to get a logical explanation for the occurrences he was given a clout and rebuked.

Jack was even lambasted and received a warning to stay away from the general hospital. The worker in the hospital lab who opened an unlabelled dish of culture in the lab(who did so on jack’s request) was caught in the act and found dead the following morning.

Was it just jack’s hatred towards them that was leading to this conclusion? People accuse him of slanderous accusations. Are all his painstaking efforts for naught?

Nevertheless he was pugnacious and determined to get to the bottom of that despite the reprimands and what he found was absolutely astounding.

In his arduous task he is paired up with Terese Hagan an art director at an advertising firm who is doing an ad campaign for the rival health care agency.

When you begin you do not expect much from him as he is a loner and works with corpses all day, but the book proceeds to become very gripping and by its climax, you are very pleased with jack. He is not the typical protagonist, not the typical main character every girl would fall in love with at the end of the book, yet he has this great sense of reverence elicited in us. Having moved from a clean technically demanding, emotionally fulfilling and lucrative ophthalmology to gruesome forensic work with the dead all day, I think Jack does a neat job.

Overall

The book is written very well. The stance of cook is such that he gives you bits and pieces of info here and there apart from the main plot. All of them will seem oblivious in the beginning but the manner in which they all fall into place towards the end is superb.

The story takes a lot of unexpected twists and turns. All readers are in for a nasty wrenched surprise (which of course I shall not deprive you of)

So, those of you who haven’t yet read this should try and get a hold of this. It portrays in a very raw deal, the extent to which a person can go to be successful and have their way out.