Book Review--Seizure, by Robin Cook

I have read most of Robin Cook's books, and really like them. I liked this one too, but not as much as I've liked some of his others. The main problem I had with Seizure was that there was simply too much clutter in it. It took around 400 pages to get to the part in which I was most interested.

Dr. Daniel Lowell has invented a new technique in stem-cell research, one that promises to save many lives. He and his partner (personal and professional) Stephanie D'Agostino, have their own biotechnology firm, and with it they hope they will save lives and reap huge financial benefits.

However, the biotechnology firm faces a serious threat. Senator Ashley Butler, an extremely conservative Southern Democrat (he seemed more like a right-wing Republican), has introduced legislation to ban Daniel's technique. Daniel and Stephanie go to Washington, D.C., to testify in a subcommittee meeting in which they attempt to explain the procedure and emphasize that it does not involve the dismemberment of human embryos. They fail to convince the senator, however, and are frustrated by the biased hearing.

A few days later, however, they are contacted by Butler's Chief of Staff for a top-secret meeting. The senator has a progressive form of Parkinson's disease, and he wants Daniel and Stephanie to treat him for it using Daniel's new technique, though they have yet to try it on a human. The senator demands absolute secrecy, as he doesn't want knowledge of his illness to threaten his political future, which he hopes will include someday becoming president. In exchange, Ashley promises that the bill he is sponsering banning the procedure will die in subcommittee. If the bill dies, the financing for Daniel's company would come through.

Ashley has one final demand. The procedure requires the DNA of someone who does not have Parkinson's disease. It doesn't matter who the person is, since there is no tissue matching involved, the way there would be for an organ transplant. He wants the DNA to be obtained from a blood sample taken from the Shroud of Turin, which is thought to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, though this is controversial. Ashley believes it to be real, and he wants this bit of "divine intervention."

Here is where it starts to get really "cluttered." Ashley greases the wheels so that Daniel and Stephanie are able to get a sample from the Shroud of Turin. They make a trip to Turin to obtain it and nearly get arrested. They get away but have to leave all their luggage. They then go to the Bahamas, where the procedure has to be done in order to avoid violating any FDA rules. They have to be there several weeks before Ashley, as there are things they have to do before they will be ready to do the procedurel. The clinic where the procedure is to be done, Wingate Clinic, was featured in a earlier novel of Cook's (Shock). The clinic was in Massachusetts, until the directors moved it rather suddenly to the Bahamas rather than face the consequences of being involved in the disappearance of two female Harvard students and unethical practices related to infertility treatments and illegally removing ovaries from women without their consent. Stephanie had to reluctant to go along with treating Ashley in the first place, and she is not happy about dealing with the Wingate Clinic and its directors, Dr. Spencer Wingate and Dr. Paul Saunders. She does some snooping, hoping to find evidence of wrongdoing which she can turn over to the authorities once they are done treating Ashley. She manages to get into their "egg room" and gets caught by their thug of a security guard, who puts her into an actual jail cell in the clinic's basement. To get her out, Daniel has to sign some sort of confidentiality agreement, basically stating that if he or Stephanie blows the whistle on the clinic, the clinic will blow the whistle on them.

An additional side plot is that Stephanie's family has mob connections, and her brother and some of his associates are not happy about their investments in Daniel and Stephanie's biotechnology firm being in jeopardy. They cannot understand how Daniel and Stephanie can be trying to save the firm in the Bahamas and send a thug down on two occasions to communicate their displeasure.

Now, the book is called Seizure because the procedure causes Ashley to have bizarre seizures. So, I figured that the procedure would be done relatively early on in the story, and that the story would focus on that more. But that's not what happens. Ashley doesn't have the procedure done until almost the end of the book, and very little time is devoted to actually dealing with the complications. The ending, by the way, is quite bizarre.

So anyway, the book was still pretty interesting, but it had too much clutter and too many side plots for my taste. Some side plots are fine; they make a book more interesting. And it wasn't that these subplots weren't interesting or even that they were hard to follow; it's just that there were too many.