Death Benefit (A Medical Thriller)

I have read all of Robin Cooks books to date and havent been disappointed in any of them.
This latest book follows suite.
BUT .. The fact that the kindle edition of this release is $3 more than the paperback version has me confused.
Why pay more for for an e book that obviously costs less to manufacture than its printed version.

I dont know if this is the fault of the author, the publisher or amazon but it has me wondering if my next purchase will be kindle based..

I took me quite a while to discover this author although I may have read some of his paperbacks long time ago - he is not that young...

Before reading his bio on Wikipedia, I realized that he was a medical doctor - the book is written pretty much from a doctor's perspective. I do not want to replicate the Wiki article here but his story is not an entertainment only. It is quite informative and, as far as I know, quite accurate.

The crime is committed using a fairly new method that became widely known in London 2007 and I remember well. I actually checked the five year old facts before this specific event was mentioned in the book. Impressed that the news stories were reproduced (later in the book) almost verbatim. I just happen to have a member of my family specializing in this particular area - hence my enhanced memory.

Notice I am being deliberately vague, I really do not want to spoil anything for new readers.

I am very happy with this 'discovery' of a good writer before Christmas. It may be warm enough in Palm Springs just before the end of 2012 to sit outside and read my original (cheapest) Kindle there.

Highty recommended.

The ending of this book was so poorly executed that I thought my Kindle was broken and hadn't downloaded the entire book. It just ends suddenly with multiple story lines unresolved. It seems that Cook was on a deadline and just stopped writing suddenly. Terrible.

I have been a fan of Robin Cook for many years, have always enjoyed his books. This, however was a very great disappointment.
The book started out rather well, I thought, although the main character was not a charmer and not very credible. Then, about in the middle,the story went downhill fast. It got so ridiculous that I could not wait to finish it and move on to something more interesting. I really hope that the next book is better because this one left much to be desired.

This book has two supposedly intelligent med school characters who acted in a way that was not very logical for people that smart. They went against the instructions of the med school dean and of medical doctors at the hospital. The story could have been much better if the main characters weren’t so stupid.

Very bad ending disappointed left me in the air not knowing what happened to key players

I found Death Benefit to be a pretty tedious read. The sad thing is that the story line could have been very interesting, but due to unlikable characters and a plodding pace, it just didn't hold my interest.

One aside that did make it inappropriately funny for me is that I instantly pictured the character of Pia as being played by Abi-Maria Gomes from the fall 2012 season of Survivor. Every time Pia threw a temper tantrum, I could see Abi.

I normally really enjoy Cook's books. This one fell short.

I was very disappointed with this book. I haven't read a book by Robin Cook in a long time and now I remember why. I do NOT recommend this book.

A cunning plan to make money by purchasing and bundling insurance policies of mostly elderly people is threatened by new, cutting edge medical research, being developed at an ivy league medical facility. What will greedy money managers be willing to do to protect their investments, and can a brilliant, beautiful, but damaged medical student discover the reason behind some recent and unusual sudden stuff deaths? A terrific medical thriller!

It's been a while since I've read a Robin Cook book. The last one I read, Toxin, kept me awake to finish and scared the heck out of me. I have not eaten a hamburger outside since. But Death Benefits was no where close to that story. It dragged, mainly because there was a lot of talking about nothing. The frustrating thing is that I could see what the author was trying to reach, and wasn't able to. So that's either a lack of editing or a refusal on the author's part to be edited. Whatever. The bottom line is that the story was the worse for it. Don't judge Robin Cook by this book. He writes cutting edge thrillers that are relevant to life today and in the near future. But choose a different title to start with, or this will be the last one you read.