Holiday Reading?

Back from his latest vacation visit the Minor Godlet brings details of two books he stumbled across at the home of his hostess - one he rates Alpha Plus, the other, Delta Minus.

To start with the loser, published five or six years ago, a supposed medical thriller by Robin Cook called Seizure:

Unlike some of Cook's other books (such as Coma) this one unfortunately failed to thrill right from page 1. There were characters you could hardly raise any interest in, having conversations in agonisingly stilted language and becoming involved in almost unbelievably ludicrous events. Obviously written post Da Vinci we had to put up with a trip to Europe to visit a Cardinal in connection with the Turin Shroud. Back home the Mafia were somehow dragged in from nowhere and through it all you had to wonder how the central characters ever managed to build up a business together. The medical plot was gripping, involving surely-not-far-off procedures in DNA manipulation as a way to cure progressively debilitating diseases such as Parkinsons, but it seemed as though that story, which surely started out as the whole point of the book, was completely swamped by all the junk.

In fact, after the obligatory 500 or so pages there was no time left for any kind of resolution of the issues raised. It felt as though the author must have received a request from the publisher for delivery of the manuscript and just typed a few closing paragraphs before he pressed Print and leapt into a taxi.


On the other hand, The Lazarus Child by Robert Mawson was rated an utterly gripping read.

Published a little earlier, in 1998, this also deals with the development of medical procedures whose time you feel is almost here, in the field of coma research. It is easy to feel drawn into the lives of these characters, centering around a family whose children are involved in a road accident. For the most part the writing cuts and jumps so that we helter-skelter along, though there are some slower, descriptive dream sequences. These fit perfectly into the flow of the book, despite seeming maybe a little LordoftheRingsish.

Mawson gave himself plenty of time to finish what he had started before the publisher's deadline hit, leaving the satisfying feeling that you can imagine how the lives of the characters continue after you put the book down.

Or maybe that's just me.