Abridged. Four cassettes, 6 hours.
Technology and greed converge in this spine-tingling novel of medicine run amok by the bestselling master of medical suspense.
Deborah Cochrane and Joanna Meissner, graduate science students and close friends, spot a campus newspaper ad that promises to solve their financial problems: an exclusive, highly profitable fertility clinic on Boston's North Shore is looking for egg donors. Deborah and Joanna figure they can do a good deed-help infertile couples-and earn money. Although rumors of a fellow student donor's unexplained disappearance surface, the duo is not deterred.
The procedures seem to go smoothly. Deborah is particularly intrigued by the technology involved and by Dr. Spencer Windgate, the charismatic fertility expert responsible for the clinic's success. But second thoughts and curiosity prompt the two women to find out more about the fate of their donated eggs. Stymied by the clinic's veil of secrecy, Deborah and Joanna obtain employment there to continue their probe. Working under aliases, they soon discover the horrifying aims of Dr. Windgate's research, immediately putting their lives-and their sanity-irrevocably at risk.
Posited on up-to-the-minute science, Shock finds Robin Cook at the uncertain crossroads of medical technology and ethics.
Robin Cook, master of bestselling medical thrillers, answers the "What's the worst thing that could happen?" question in this plot-twisting novel in which villains with no sense of ethics or social responsibility get their greedy hands on the newest cloning technology. It starts when a couple of Harvard graduate students answer the Wingate Clinic's ad for egg donors. The women figure on financing a year in Venice and the down payment on a Boston condo with the extraordinary sum they're promised. But a year later, the heroines feel the emotional need to seek out the children they've made possible for infertile couples. So they disguise themselves and seek jobs at the clinic in order to access the identifying information. The clinic, as it turns out, has plenty of secrets to protect, so it's hard to believe that a pair of computer neophytes could bypass its security. But they do, and the author is an adept enough writer to finesse this detail. As in past books, Cook is much better at the technical details of medical research than he is at characterization, but he definitely knows how to plot a thriller. This one keeps you turning the pages until the final denouement, though the last chapter ends abruptly, leaving the reader to wonder whether he ran out of steam or is just setting up a sequel in which he'll recycle the villains in a new scheme with a new pair of victims. --Jane Adams
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