Foreign Body by Robin Cook, ISBN 9780330445535

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Jennifer Hernandez is a fourth-year medical student at UCLA whose world is shattered during an otherwise ordinary day. While half-listening to a news report on medical tourism, where first-world citizens travel to third-world countries for surgery, she hears her beloved grandmother's name mentioned, and her own heart nearly stops: the reporter says Maria Suarez-Hernandez had died, a day after undergoing a hip replacement in New Delhi's Queen Victoria Hospital.

Maria raised Jennifer and her brothers from infancy, and their bond was unshakable. Still, the news that Maria had travelled to India is a shock to Jennifer, until she realises it was the only viable option for the hardworking yet uninsured woman. Devastated, Jennifer takes emergency leave from school and heads to India, where relations with local officials go from sympathetic to sour as she presses for information. With the discovery of other unexplained deaths followed by hasty cremations, Jennifer reaches out to her mentor, New York City medical examiner Dr Laurie Montgomery.

Laurie, along with her husband, Dr Jack Stapleton, rushes to the younger woman's side. And as the death count grows, so do the questions, leading Laurie and Jennifer to unveil a sinister, multilayered conspiracy of global proportions.

RRP: $19.99

About the Author: Robin Cook

Dr. Robin Cook (born May 4, 1940 in New York City, New York) is an American physician and novelist who writes about medicine and topics affecting public health.

He is best known for combining medical writing with the thriller genre. Several of his books have been bestsellers on the "New York Times" Bestseller List. Several of his books have also been featured in Reader's Digest.

Cook's novels have anticipated national controversy. Interviewer Stephen McDonald talked to him about his novel Shock; Cook admits the timing of Shock was fortuitous. "I suppose that you could say that it's the most like Coma in that it deals with an issue that everybody seems to be concerned about," he says, "I wrote this book to address the stem cell issue, which the public really doesn't know anything about. Besides entertaining readers, my main goal is to get people interested in some of these issues, because it's the public that ultimately really should decide which way we ought to go in something as ethically questioning as stem cell research."

To date, he has explored issues such as organ donation, genetic engineering, fertility treatment, in - vitro fertilization, research funding, managed care, medical malpractice, medical tourism, drug research, and organ transplantation.

"I joke that if my books stop selling, I can always fall back on brain surgery," he says. "But I am still very interested in it. If I had to do it over again, I would still study medicine. I think of myself more as a doctor who writes, rather than a writer who happens to be a doctor." He explained the popularity of his works thus: "The main reason is, we all realize we are at risk. We're all going to be patients sometime," he says. "You can write about great white sharks or haunted houses, and you can say I'm not going into the ocean or I'm not going in haunted houses, but you can't say you're not going to go into a hospital."

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