Intervention

 

Title: InterventionAuthor: Robin CookPublisher: MacMillan 2009 (First)Pages: 387ISBN: 978-0-230-74364-9

This time, I took Robin Cook for a change. He had produced several medical thrillers previously, and this one was also declared to be on the same mould. Whatever may be the advantages of Mr. Cook, having a scientific mind is not one of them, or that'd be the impression one'd get from reading this trash of a fiction riddled with historical and factual inaccuracies. Published in 2009, the author had filled in scenes from the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica and St. Peter's Tomb probably to cash in on the public interest following the papal ascent of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. A lot of books which were produced during that period invariably involved the prominent characters groping in the dark in the St. Peter's Basilica. There are many pretenders, but there is only one emperor. Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons' is incomparable in attention to detail, fact and thrill to any of the dime-a-dozen thrillers which were churned out from presses every month.

Jack Stapleton, the famous medical examiner in New York city and is the hero of many of Cook's previous thrillers is the main protagonist. Shawn Daughtry, a famous archeologist and James O'Rourke, the archbishop of New York are class mates of Jack's. Shawn, along with his microbiologist wife Sana hits upon the location of the ossuary of Virgin Mary (no less!) buried in St. Peter's Basilica. They access the ossuary with the help of an ID obtained with the pressure from the cardinal and threatens to publish the details of it. The archbishop is upset because such a collection of bones would go contrary to pope's infallible decree that St. Mary ascended the heavens directly. He tries to persuade his classmate but to no avail. He sends a young fanatic staying in a monastery to Shawn's house to argue him from publishing the details. Steeped in religious superstition and unable to defend himself from the sexual advances of Sana, the enraged monk-zealot turns arsonist and kills his hosts becoming a martyr himself for the sacred cause, a fidayeen (suicide bomber)!

Jack is upset by the neuroblastoma of his three-month old son. The treatment was not progressing as expected. During his job, he picks up a case of death caused by the spinal manipulations performed by a chiropractor. A good argument ensues between him and the chiropractor in which the fallacies of the weird technique is painted in detail. In fact, there is a good coverage on alternative medicine in general. Shawn's wife, who was a microbiologist, separates the mitochondrial DNA from a teeth in the ossuary and finds a match between it, a living Muslim woman in Palestine and the predicted mDNA of Eve herself! Jack is assured that the Palestinian woman is a direct descendent of St. Mary and he flies to Jerusalem along with his wife and cancerous kid. Finding the woman, he begs her to bless the child and say that he has been cured. She does likewise, in return for some money and voila, the child is cured of cancer!

The book is worthless, even though coming as it does from a doyen of medical precision. In an earlier work, titled Seizure, Cook makes his hero separate the DNA from the 'Shroud of Turin' which was thought to contain the blood of Jesus Christ himself and inject it into the brain of a wealthy patient to cure him of Parkinson's. It was Jesus then, and Mary now. It seems Robin Cook can't separate the mythical from the real and is a prisoner of his childhood fantasies! The fact that the Shroud of Turin was proved to be a fake and there was no historical evidence for the life of Jesus, let alone Mary don't prevent the author from coming out with rubbish. The stalwart hero, who started a crusade against alternate medicine ends up with declaring the efficacy of faith healing!

There is an interesting mention about college life and how it affects a person's onward life. As the hero says, "No one seems to realize when you go to college what a wonderful experience it is. At the time it always seems so hectic, with some giant paper or exam weighing you down. And when someone tries to tell you how special college is while you're there, all you can say to yourself is, Oh Sure! If this is the best that it gets, I'm in serious trouble.

The publisher also seems to be callous in the extreme. In the back cover, under the synopsis, it is written that, "When Kevin Murray, now Bishop of the archdiocese of New York, gets wind of Shawn's findings....". Every thing is fine, except that the name of the bishop was James O'Rourke in the book and not Kevin Murray. How such an error can happen! No body even seems to proof read the work! Any way, such an error is apt for a nonsensical book like this.

Rating: 1 Star