Not a healthy read

REVEIEW

Robin Cook’s latest offering, diagnoses Siddharth Zarabi, could have been much better

Had bestselling author Robin Cook, a writer of 27 novels, sent the manuscript of his latest effort, Foreign Body, to an Indian journalist, may be, just may be, the world at large would have seen a hint of a plot and a semblance of a story line.

Instead, he chose an Indian doctor to do so. The reason is understandable — the book is set in

India and is about the “medical tourism” industry, and how private hospitals here treat overseas patients in five-star environs.

The plot revolves around a series of mysterious, “sudden” deaths in Indian hospitals and attempts by an American healthcare company to wreck India’s growing medical tourism industry. The main character is Jennifer Hernandez, a fourth-year medical student at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose grandmother suddenly dies at a New Delhi hospital, where she had come for a hip replacement surgery.

With medicare costs being what they are in the United States (and the greenback goes a long way in the developing world), it made sense to come to India. A bit of the sun on the side was part of the post-op recovery deal.

Hernandez is shocked when she hears about the sudden death of her grandmother Maria, in a CNN report about medical tourism. After all, Hernandez has no knowledge that her grandmother was in India for a surgery. Her death is attributed to a heart-attack and Hernandez drops everything and flies to India.

Upon arrival and further investigation, she comes face-to-face with the complexity and diversity of India and stumbles upon the conspiracy by an American healthcare company that results in a series of unfortunate deaths.

A review of a medical thriller by Cook is an opportunity. The good doctor wrote his first novel the year I was born. As I grew up, so did Cook’s reputation and skill at mixing medical fact with sheer fantasy and fear. Bestselling Coma went on to be adapted into a movie, while Shock got readers to come to grips with stem cells, cloning and other such subjects. Many of Cook’s novels were bestsellers and the man’s reputation remains unchallenged. Things change though and I guess that with the latest tome, they have indeed for the author.

After I read through (and I must admit, it was hard to remain focused), my first reaction was that the Indian doctor, who so helpfully read Cook’s self-confessed exaggerated view of the Indian medical tourism industry, was just being polite.

Much of the book is populated with surprises. Nurses folding their hands to say “namaste” to everyone, having a naughty time with their American bosses in a British Raj era mansion; a goon with a Bengali first name, teamed up with one from the northern badlands, using a Mercedes to tail another car, thousands of black E-class Mercedes cars with fake number plates on Delhi streets — the list goes on.

The plot has other little devils and banshees in it. But, there is a lot of reality too — one that deals with the dirt and grime that we see all around us in our daily lives — from corrupt cops, to the growing nexus between industry, the bureaucracy and the political class.

All in all, this is a book that could have been much better.

FOREIGN BODY 
Author: Robin Cook
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Pages: 448