Intervention

June 15, 2009
In this uneven medical thriller from bestseller Cook (Foreign Body
), Dr. Jack Stapleton, a New York City forensic pathologist who lost his first wife and their two children in a plane crash, is devastated when his newborn son by his second wife is diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma. As a diversion from his efforts to find a cure for his son, Stapleton seeks to expose unscrupulous practitioners of alternative medicine. In particular, he investigates the death of a healthy woman whose vertebral arteries were damaged by a chiropractor. Then the plot swerves into Da Vinci Code
territory as two of Stapleton's college friends—the archbishop of New York and an archeologist—battle over skeletal remains that may be those of the Virgin Mary. When the characters themselves comment on the events as something out of a horror movie or a book, suspension of disbelief becomes even more of a challenge (e.g., “He felt like he was a participant in a kind of unfolding real-life mystery-thriller”).

Facing the decline of his baby son, who was born with a life-threatening disease, New York City forensic pathologist Jack Stapleton tries to distract himself by exposing the follies of alternative medicine and the Roman Catholic faith. George Guidall's capable narration provides much-needed consistency for a tangle of mostly disconnected story lines. Guidall is gifted at voicing older men who are experiencing life challenges, and this thriller is centered around three: a declining archaeologist who is desperate to restore his fading career, a power-hungry archbishop who is frantic to conceal his involvement in the removal of ancient skeletal remains from St. Peter's tomb in Rome, and Stapleton, who brings them together. Guidall reveals the fear and self-doubt hiding behind Stapleton's renegade campaigns to uncover his version of the truth. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine