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Robin Cook - TV Tropes

  • ️Thu Aug 08 2024

Robert Brian Cook is an American physician and a prolific novelist of medical thrillers who was born in 1940. His Non-Fiction production consists of medical treatises about public health. When he was drafted by the US Navy, he served as a submarine physician in the SEALAB program.

Several of his novels have received a Live-Action Adaptation.

Works:

Stand-alone novels

Book series

Tropes:

  • Clone Jesus: Downplayed in Seizure where a conservative U.S. senator suffering from Parkinson's disease is undergoing a therapy (which he was about to ban in the first place) in which a patient with an incurable disease is returned to health through the injection of cloned stem cells. He wants the stem cells injected into his brain to come from the Shroud of Turin. Afterwards, he indeed experiences some messianic visions but it turns out that they were temporal lobe epilepsy seizures caused by dislocated injection, not by the origin of cells. So, no copy of Jesus in this book, only His cells.
  • Delicate and Sickly: In Fever, Michelle suffers from leukemia and is further weakened by chemotherapy.
  • Don't Explain the Joke: He has a habit of doing this in his medical thrillers. In Vector, for instance, after Jack uses orifice in a sentence, the narration explains that is a malapropism that means office. Then again, Cook also feels the need to explain, earlier in the same book, that two characters winking at each other is "part of an established method of nonverbal communication," so maybe he just really loves to explain everything.

    "Chet, old sport," Jack said, giving Chet a pat on the back, "thanks for being the cavalry, and I'll see you back at the orifice in a few minutes." "Orifice" was a comical malapropism for "office" that Jack and Chet frequently used when speaking with each other."

  • Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: In Invasion, the Replicant Snatching aliens are thwarted by the release of a rhinovirus, AKA the common cold.
  • Enfant Terrible: In Mutation, V.J. is a boy whose superior intellect (and perhaps his angelic good looks as well) is the result of his father's genetic tinkering. He, however, has no sense of morality, commits a series of high-tech murders, and uses underhand means to finance his own biotechnological research.
  • Harmful Healing: Discussed in Acceptable Risk when Kim and Edward visit the grave of Kim's ancestor who died in 1734 at the age of 81. Edward comments, "To reach such a ripe old age he must have been smart enough to stay away from doctors. In those days with all the reliance on bloodletting and a primitive pharmacopeia, doctors were as lethal as most of the illnesses."
  • Improbably High I.Q.: In Mutation, a scientist genetically modifies his son VJ to be a super genius. VJ is said to have an IQ of 250, although the narration adds "as far as they could determine", implying it's only a rough estimate. And then the kid loses most of his intellect for mysterious reasons; his IQ then drops to a "smart but not a genius" score of 130. Or so VJ wants everybody to believe.
  • Informed Self-Diagnosis: At the beginning of Mutation, a three-year-old Child Prodigy complains of "a headache of a pounding variety, like a migraine". Hours later he falls into a coma, then dies. This is a major Plot Point; he was one of a few toddlers with the same genetically engineered Super-Intelligence as the ten-year-old Big Bad—who decided he wanted no competition.
  • Not What It Looks Like: In Vital Signs, a woman walks in on her husband and his secretary. He of course insists, "This is not what you are thinking!", but she storms out.
  • Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: In Invasion, the dinosaurs are completely wiped out by super-advanced alien entities hoping to assimilate intelligent creatures like humanity into their collective.
  • Professor Guinea Pig: In Acceptable Risk, Dr. Edward Armstrong creates a new anti-depressant drug and decides to start taking it himself in order to streamline the clinical trial process. His team of researchers agree to take the drug as well. Too bad it makes them start having sleepwalking episodes in which they behave like carnivorous reptiles.
  • Self-Disposing Villain: In the climax of Vector, the two villains polish each other off.
  • Televisually Transmitted Disease: The common medical saying "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras" is discussed in Outbreak when the protagonist experiences a lot of skepticism over a diagnosis of ebola. Similarly, Jack experiences skepticism over an anthrax diagnosis in Vector. There are probably lots of other examples since Cook has written dozens of medical thrillers.
  • Working the Same Case: In Blindsight, Laurie gets into repeated arguments with her police friend about which is more important: a string of cocaine overdoses among previously upstanding rich kids, and a series of gangland murders. It turns out that a recently blinded mob boss is a bit impatient for his cornea transplant and is working on both ends of the problem. In order to make sure that the organ donors were in an acceptable condition, he had them die of a forcible cocaine overdose, followed by being stuffed in the refrigerator until the police arrived. As for the waiting line of patients, it didn't particularly matter how they died.
  • Write What You Know: Cook is a doctor who writes medical thrillers. Also, since he attended Columbia University and Harvard, it's not uncommon for his novels to be set in New York City or Boston.