Publishers Weekly
Cook constructs a promising yet ultimately wearying plot around the issue of therapeutic cloning, picking up where his last novel, Shock, left off. Readers are once again privy to the morally questionable goings on at the Wingate Infertility Clinic in the Bahamas, but its doctors are side players here. Leading the action is former Harvard biotech ace Daniel Lowell, who has formed his own company to investigate a cloning technique in which a patient with an incurable disease is returned to health through the injection of stem cells. In this case the disease is Parkinson's, and the patient is Ashley Butler, a conservative U.S. senator from the South. For political reasons, Butler opposes the legalization of Lowell's technique. Yet Butler-given about a year to live-is willing to switch sides if Lowell agrees to try out the treatment on him first. The kicker is that the fundamentalist Butler wants the stem cells injected into his brain to come from a very specific source: the Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Cook provides plenty of action as well as polemical asides about the ethics of cloning (he believes politics intrudes far too often into medical and biotech issues), yet readers waiting for a jolt or a revelation will be disappointed. Cook occasionally lets loose the propulsive narrative force that characterizes his best work, but much of the plot is stale and contrived. Readers will have to endure characters who fail to stir emotions (such as a band of corny mobsters), as well as descriptions of Bahamanian resorts that read like paid promotional material. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Like Coma and Cook's other books, this latest thriller revolves around current controversial medical issues. Two scientists involved in stem cell research and therapeutic cloning are forced by a conservative Southern senator to use their untested gene therapy to cure his Parkinson's disease. Since the procedure requires DNA, the senator asks them to use blood from the Shroud of Turin. The scientists must travel from Boston to Italy to the Bahamas, constantly avoiding scrutiny by people trying either tostop them or to discover their plans. The procedure finally takes place within the last 70 pages, making for an anticlimactic ending, especially given the possibilities established by the overall premise. With a number of loose ends not tied up in a completely satisfactory way, the book almost begs for a sequel. Still, Cook's fans will certainly enjoy his latest, which belongs in most popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/03.]-Joel W. Tscherne, Cleveland P.L. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Public antagonists become conspirators as a medical entrepreneur performs a controversial operation on a duplicitous politician. In an afterword, Cook (Shock, 2001, etc.) warns us that political prohibitions against embryonic stem-cell research are misinformed and will only make things worse. Here, they're bad enough for Dr. David Lowell, a brilliant, egotistical, and bit greedy researcher who quits Harvard to found a struggling for-profit company that will, he hopes, make millions when it develops a complicated technique involving embryonic cloning that has cured Parkinson's in mice. On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, antiabortion Senator Ashley Butler heads a subcommittee considering a bill that will ban the procedure. Called to testify before the committee, Dr. Lowell fails to persuade the senator that his technique isn't killing babies, and Lowell is later contacted by the senator's aide, Carol Manning, for a secret meeting. It turns out the senator has Parkinson's and is willing to stall the bill in his committee, as well as pay hundreds of thousands in secret PAC money to Lowell and his sexy, competent lover and business partner, Dr. Stephanie D'Agostino, to perform the operation on him secretly, with two conditions: that this be done in the Bahamas at the new Wingate Clinic, and that the cloning involve DNA taken from blood residues on the Shroud of Turin. The senator offers to sponsor a bill limiting the amount of damages in lawsuits against charities-just as a New York cardinal wants in wake of the church's sex scandals. Calls are made to the Vatican, and, while getting the sample in Turin, the doctors have their first of many brushes with danger, involving priests, Mafiosi, andother types tainted by incompetence, greed, and irrational fears. Despite all, the doctors actually pull off the operation, though Murphy's Law takes over in ways no one can expect. Typical Cook: lifeless dialogue, weak prose, and hokey plot, but a sound message: ambitious doctors and scheming politicians only increase the suffering that, deep down, both want to cure.
