Robin Cook, American novelist, is best known for the New York Times bestseller, Outbreak, the murder mystery with a medical twist. Cook’s best works combine suspense and medical writing to create exhilerating medical thrillers. His unique style of writing began with a career as a physician.
Growing up in Queens, Cook worked hard to get where he is today. He came from a middle-class family and worked his way through college at Wesleyan University then medical school at Columbia University, and finished his postgraduate medical training at Harvard.
After graduating, Cook ran a lab in the south of France before being drafted to the Navy in 1969. During his two years in the Navy, he worked as a submarine doctor and obtained the rank of lieutenant commander. It was here that he wrote his first novel, The Year of the Intern.
Cook’s novels focus on medical technology and include both fact and fiction. Dealing with modern medical innovations, his books have lead to national controversy. Shock, published in 2002, follows two graduate students who decide to become egg donors to dissolve their student debt. The book addresses stem cell research at a time when little was publicly known about the research and controversy was at a peak.
Many of Cook’s novels, including his newest release, Host, touch on the subject of corruption among pharmacuticals companies and hospitals. It’s a touchy subject today, with the for-profit model of the medical industry in America taking a lot of heat.
With 30 published novels, many of them making the New York Times Bestseller List, and nearly 400 million copies sold worldwide, Cook has become a major American author. His unique close-to-fact medical mystery storytelling has put him in a league of his own.
List of Robin Cook’s novels:
- Year of the Intern(1972)
- Coma(1977)
- Sphinx(1979)
- Brain(1981)
- Fever(1982)
- Godplayer(1983)
- Mindbend(1985)
- Outbreak(1987)
- Mortal Fear(1988)
- Mutation(1989)
- Harmful Intent(1990)
- Vital Signs(1991)
- Terminal(1993)
- Fatal Cure(1993)
- Acceptable Risk(1995)
- Invasion(1997)
- Toxin(1998)
- Abduction(2000)
- Shock(2001)
- Seizure(2003)
- Death Benefit(2011)
- Nano(2013)
- Cell(2014)
- Host(2015)
Jack Stapleton & Laurie Montgomery
- Blindsight(1992)
- Contagion(1995)
- Chromosome 6(1997)
- Vector(1999)
- Marker(2005)
- Crisis(2006)
- Critical(2007)
- Foreign Body(2008)
- Intervention(2009)
- Cure(2010)