Death Benefit by Robin Cook

Reading Level: Adult

Submitted by Gerti

Robin Cook is one of my favorite authors, so it comes as not surprise that I really enjoyed one of his recent books, called Death Benefit.  It involves (briefly) several of his stock characters, New York Medical Examiners Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton, who are some of my favorites.  But in this book, the protagonist is Pia Grazdani, a Colombia University medical student, who finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery while working in a lab on campus.  Both the professors running the lab die, and everyone else assumes they are killed by germs they have been working on, but Pia can't buy that.

The subplot involves a pair of Wall Street hotshots who have created a company that buys back life insurance policies from sick, elderly people, and their profits would be down if the Columbia professors work growing human organs were successful.  So they solicit some Albanian mobsters to kill the professors, and make it look like they were killed by their germ experiments, while in reality they have radiation poisoning.

Pia and the medical examiners get together while she is trying to find out whether the professors bodies are giving off alpha radiation, but her interference causes the mobsters to kidnap her and shoot another fellow from the lab.  It seems like all the loose ends have been tied ups, until the New York Albanians discover that the girl they've kidnapped is related to an Albanian mobster from New Jersey, and then they turn on the Wall Street guys.

If it seems complicated, it is, but there is enough of both medical information and spy drama to make for a rollicking read.  There are some mysteries left unresolved, especially regarding the workmen who spend days working on the air conditioning in the lab.  Are they mobsters?  One of the fellows does talk to Pia about her Albanian-sounding name, but it is never made clear that they are mobsters and that was when the radioactive material was planted in the professor's office.  Except for the question mark, I think "Death Benefit" was well written and will please any true Cook fan, just as it pleased me.