Cell by Robin Cook

Cell is the latest standalone novel by one of my favorites medical thriller authors, Robin Cook. I’ve been reading his books from the time I got hold of Coma, one of his earliest books. I was hooked. He was the author who gave me the love for medical thrillers in the first place.

George Wilson, a radiologist, wakes up one morning to find his fiancee dead in the bed next to him. She died apparently peacefully during the night in her sleep. She had diabetes. That George becomes devastated, is an understatement.

A few months later he learns that one of his old ideas, which he mentioned years ago to a colleague and friend of his, was finally brought to fruition.

The iPhone app exists now under the name of iDoc, and it anticipates when sick people’s lives, people with diabetes, turn for the worse. It gives them warnings, advice, and recommendations on what to take and what to do. So much that now people with iDoc have stopped to visit their regular doctors completely.

However now all these people who have the iDoc on their phones have not only given up on their doctors but now seem to drop dead like flies. And as George has found out recently, his now dead fiancee had the iDoc app on her iPhone as well.

Now it’s on George to find out what is really going on and is iDoc a helper, or a killer. And if a killer, is it due to malfunctioning or malicious intent.

Together with his old friend, Paula, the person who continued his iDoc idea and made it a reality, George is determined to get to the bottom of all these deaths, thus putting his own life in grave danger at the same time.

Robin Cook has written some wonderful medical thrillers as his earlier books. His later books though have gone in a direction that many of his loyal fans no longer enjoyed that much (me included).

With Cell, however, he is back to the style of his earlier works, like Coma, Toxin, and Mutation. These were the books that hooked me on the genre, these were the books that made Robin Cook the master of medical thrillers, and I’m glad to see Cell returning to these roots.

What’s scary about this story is that iDoc is a strong possibility. There are already countless apps for mobile phones that are used for diagnostics and even health recommendations. And AI is no longer a myth either. So connecting the two is more future than science fiction.

The only reason I don’t give this book a 5-star rating is that of  George’s character. He seems to be a bit naive. He doesn’t connect the dots very easily, and when he does, his reaction to the real reason his fiance died seems a bit flat.

The action is strong, fast-paced, which makes up for this lack of strong characters in the books. It is a summer beach read, and not a Dostoevsky, so these flaws are easily overlooked.

One thing I did get out of the book, which stayed with me long after I’ve finished reading it, is my new found respect (to not say ‘fear’) of smartphone apps. I’ll definitely watch what I’m downloading from now from the Apple store.

Overall Cell is a wonderful return to what Robin Cook is all about, and his loyal fans recognize and appreciate this in his book. I’m looking forward to reading his next book that comes out later this year, Host.