Some books thrill, chill and entertain. And some books are just plain bad.
Robin Cook's latest work, "Chromosome 6," is of the latter variety. It is not a good book by any stretch of the imagination. The plot is cliched, the characters are shallow and the writing is worse than any one of R. L. Stine's "Goosebumps" series.
The plot centers around genetically engineered animals kept on an island in the remote tropics. These animals are under constant surveillance by motion detectors. Sound familiar?
No, it's not "Jurassic Park." The animals are not dinosaurs, they are chimpanzee-like creatures. A young geneticist, Kevin Marshall, develops a process to alter genetic aspects of these animals so that they will be genetic twins of people who need organ transplants.
One of the recipients of these transplants, a Mafioso named Carlo Franconi, is gunned down by his enemies. GenSys, the company that does the transplants, fears that the transplant will be discovered during the autopsy.
The company uses other Mafiosi to steal the body from the morgue. The body is later found, dismembered and de-livered, and, little by little, Dr. Jack Stapleton discovers the curious condition of what remains of the corpse's liver.
Meanwhile, Marshall and two female associates at GenSys's facility in Equatorial Guinea are becoming concerned that the apes in their charge are becoming too human. They face trigger-happy local soldiers and the perils of the jungle to confront this issue.
Eventually, all the characters and inane subplots come together in a conclusion that made me cry because of its sheer stupidity.
On the whole, any reader of this book will experience the unholy sensation of reading a made-for-TV movie.
It gets worse. Cook has written 17 books. Included in this roster is "Coma," which was made into a movie by Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park.
Cook's writing style is, in a word, pathetic. It escapes me how someone could manage to write that many novels and still retain a writing style reminiscent of a high school creative writing exercise.
The dialogue is even worse. Some characters actually say "Hurrah." I kid you not.
Attempts at making Warren sound like a gang-banger reminded me of lines from "West Side Story."
Cook is a medical doctor, and is not shy about showing it in this book. However, the frequent medical and scientific terms only serve to make the rest of his writing look worse.
"Jurassic Park" was chock-full of such terms, but the story telling, while not Shakespearean, was certainly engaging and often well done.
The case is most assuredly not so in "Chromosome 6."
