Mutation

by Robin Cook

Overview

In Mutation, Robin Cook's masterpiece of techno-medical suspense, Dr. Cook tells a story as chilling and real as today's headlines. On the forefront of surrogate parenting and genetic research, it is the explosive tale of a brilliant doctor who sought to create the son of his dreams—and invented a living nightmare...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425119655
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/28/1990
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	183,471
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.80(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	750L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Nano, and is credited with popularizing the medical thriller with his wildly successful first novel, Coma. He divides his time between Boston and Florida. His most recent bestsellers include Death Benefit, Cure, and Intervention.

Editorial Reviews

Holds you page after page.

Larry King

A chiller...sweeps you along at an ever-swiftening pace.

Associated Press

Robin Cook has written a bad book. It's not a bad book because it's badly written, although it is. It's a bad book because Dr. Cook, the author of numerous medical thrillers, shows so much disregard for his readers' intelligence, expecting them to keep reading about the antics of characters so unperceptive that no one can possibly care about them past the first hundred pages....The book is a lot of descriptions of weather, specific references to highway exits, names of medical apparatus and missed cues, all culminating in a colossal explosion that destroys everything. For this reader it came none too soon. -- New York Times

Jackie Kaufman

Like many of Cook's earlier novels ( Coma , Brain , Fever ), this overheated medical thriller covers a hokey, old-fashioned contrivancethe creation of a mad scientist runs amokwith a veneer of cutting-edge technology. The result resembles an ancient, none-too-scary horror movie played out on modern sets. The author's version of evil genius Dr. Frankenstein is Dr. Victor Frank, a bio-physicist who is driven by his wife Marsha's infertility to create a monster: a son whose genetic structure has been designed to preordain brilliance. Keeping the experiment a secret from his wife, he implants similar embryos in two other women as well. (``When I did it, it seemed like a good idea,'' he claims, in one of the novel's funnier lines.) A decade later, his work goes awry; the other children die mysteriously, and Marsha realizes that something about her smart son isn't quite normalhe has no emotions. (Readers may wonder why, as a child psychologist, she took 10 years to notice.) Cook's characterization is perfunctory even by genre standards, and his initially suspenseful story collapses under the weight of clumsy action scenes and twists that rupture the internal logic of an already shaky premise. Literary Guild main selection. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

YA-- Cook has created another chilling medical suspense story, this time using the perils of genetic engineering as the central theme. Readers will be captivated by this genius child, V. J. Frank. Dr. Victor Frank, a biomolecular researcher, has tampered with the genetic make-up of his son during his in vitro fertilization and implantation in a surrogate mother. To all appearances, V. J. is a physically perfect child with super intellectual capabilities. However, when his mother begins to suspect some changes and problems with V. J.'s behavior, the plot takes off, keeping readers always in suspense. This timely topic of genetic engineering is imaginatively explored.-- Susan Penny, St. Cecilia's School, Houston

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