Jack Stapleton & Laurie Montgomery Books In Order

Blindsight

Organ transplants are common today. But the master of medical suspense imagines what could happen when supply falls short of demand.

Contagion

After losing his Midwestern ophthalmology practice to a for profit medical giant, and then his family to a commuter airline tragedy, Dr. John Stapleton’s life is in ashes. Abandoning his home and practice, Stapleton retrains as a medical examiner and relocates to a city that suits his changed perspective: the cold concrete maze of New York City. Stapleton thinks he is past pain and past caring, but as a series of lethal illneses capped by a particularly deadly outbreak of a rare strain of influenza strikes the young, the old and the innocent, his suspicions are aroused. And when the apparent epicenter of these outbreaks is revealed to be a hospital controlled by the same for profit giant that cannibalized his old ophthalmology practice, Stapleton fears he has stumbled upon a conspiracy of catastrophic proportions. Solving the mystery leads to his unlikely pairing, both professionally and personally, with Terese Hagen, an art director at a hot Madison Avenue advertising firm. And as he gets closer to discovering the real explanation behind the killer Contagions, he finds his life is on the line for there are those who will pay any price to keep the diabolical truth from being revealed. Contagion anticipates some of the uncharted consequences of managed health care, in an age when even the wariest consumer may be at risk. It is a terrifying cautionary tale for the millennium, as health care giants collide. It is Robin Cook at his unerring best.

Chromosome 6

The mutilated body of a notorious underworld figure leads forensic pathologist Dr. Jack Stapleton to a mysterious group in Africa that uses state of the art medical technology for sinister purposes.Lit Guild, Mystery Guild, & Doubleday Main.

Vector

New York cab driver Yuri Davydov is a disgruntled Russian immigrant ready to lash out at his adoptive nation, which he believes has denied him the American Dream. As a former technician in the Soviet Union’s biological weapons system, Yuri knows how to wreak havoc in his new home. But before he executes his masterpiece of vengenance, he experiments first on selected targets. Dr Jack Stapleton begins to witness some unusual cases in his capacity as forensic pathologist in the City medical examiner’s office. A Greek immigrant apparently succumbs to sudden overwhelming pneumonia, while an obese Afro American woman collapses with acute respiratory distress. When an unexpected coincidence suggest to Jack that these seemingly unrelated deaths are actually connected murders, his colleagues and superiors remain sceptical. Meanwhile he is taking himself deeper into deadly danger but can he reach the heart of the puzzle before Davydov and his associates unleash into the streets of New York the ultimate terror: a modern bio weapon!

Marker

The master of the medical thriller returns with his most heart pounding tale yet. Twenty eight year old Sean McGillin is the picture of health, until he fractures his leg while in line skating in New York City’s Central Park. Within twenty four hours of his surgery, he dies. A thirty six year old mother, Darlene Morgan, has knee surgery to repair a torn ligament in her knee. And within twenty four hours, she has died. New York City medical examiners Dr. Laurie Montgomery and Dr. Jack Stapleton are back, in Robin Cook’s electrifying twenty fifth novel. Last seen in Vector, the doctors confront a series of puzzling hospital deaths of young, healthy people after successful routine surgery. Despite institutional resistance from her superiors, as well as from those at Manhattan General, Laurie doggedly pursues the investigation. Though it seems impossible to determine why and how the patients are dying, she comes to suspect that not only are the deaths related they’re intentional, suggesting the work of a remarkably clever serial killer with a very unusual motive, involving frightening ties to both developing genomic medicine and the economics of modern day health care. Then Laurie is dealt a double blow: While coping with Jack’s inability to commit to their relationship, she discovers she carries a genetic Marker for a breast cancer gene. As her personal life continues to unravel, the need for answers becomes more urgent, especially when Laurie is pulled into the nightmare as a potential victim herself. With time winding down, she and Jack race to connect the dots and save Laurie’s life. With his signature blend of suspense and science, Robin Cook delivers an electrifying page turner as vivid as today’s headlines.

Crisis

When Dr. Craig Bowman is served with a summons for medical malpractice, he’s shocked, enraged, and more than a little humiliated. A devoted physician who works continuously in the service of others, he endured grueling years of training and is now a partner in an exclusive concierge medical practice. No longer forced to see more and more patients while spending less and less time with each one just to keep his office door open, he now provides the kind of medical care he is trained to do, lavishing twenty-four-hour availability and personalized attention on his handpicked patients. And at last, he is earning a significant income, no longer burdened by falling reimburseme*nts from insurance companies. But this idyllic practice comes to a grinding halt one sunny afternoon-and gets much, much worse.

Enter Dr. Jack Stapleton, a medical examiner in New York City and Bowman’s brother-in-law: Jack’s sister Alexis-now Craig’s estranged wife-tearfully begs for his help as her husband’s trial drags on. Jack agrees to travel to Boston to offer his forensic services and expert witness experience to Craig’s beleaguered defense attorney. But when Jack’s irreverent suggestion to exhume the corpse to disprove the alleged malpractice is taken seriously, he opens a Pandora’s box of trouble. As Craig Bowman’s life and career are put on the line, Jack is on the verge of making a most unwelcome discovery of tremendous legal and medical significance-and there are people who will do anything to keep him from learning the truth.

Critical

Angela Dawson, M.D., appears to have it all: at the age of thirty seven, she owns a fabulous New York City apartment, a stunning seaside house on Nantucket, and enjoys the perks of her prosperous lifestyle. But her climb to the top was rough, marked by a troubled childhood, a failed marriage, and the devastating blow of bankruptcy as a primary care internist. Painfully aware of the role of economics in modern life, particularly in the health care field, Angela returned to school to earn an MBA. Armed with a shiny new degree and blessed with determination, intelligence, and impeccable timing, Angela founded a start up company, Angels Healthcare, then took it public. With her controlling interest in three busy specialty hospitals in New York City and plans for others in Miami and Los Angeles, Angela’s future looked very bright.

Then a surge of drug resistant staph infections in all three hospitals devastates Angela’s carefully constructed world. Not only do the infections result in patient deaths, but the fatalities also cause stock prices to tumble, leaving market analysts wondering if Angela will be able to hold her empire together.

New York City medical examiners Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton are naturally intrigued by the uptick in staph related post procedure deaths. Aside from their own professional curiosity, there’s a personal stake as well: Laurie and Jack are newly married, and Jack is facing surgery to repair a torn ligament at Angels Orthopedic Hospital. Despite Jack’s protests, Laurie can’t help investigating opening a Pandora’s box of corporate intrigue that threatens not just her livelihood, but her life with Jack as well.

Foreign Body

A series of unexplained deaths in foreign hospitals sends an idealistic UCLA medical student on a desperate search for answers, in this chilling tale from the master of the medical thriller. Jennifer Hernandez is a fourth year medical student at UCLA, just completing an elective in general surgery, whose world is shattered during a break in an otherwise ordinary day. While relaxing in the surgical lounge of L.A.’s Cedars Sinai Medical Center, she half listens to a piece on medical tourism, where first world citizens travel to third world countries for surgery. But when she hears her beloved grandmother s name mentioned, her own heart nearly stops: the CNN reporter says Maria Suarez Hernandez had died, a day after undergoing a hip replacement in New Delhi s Queen Victoria Hospital. Maria had raised Jennifer and her brothers from infancy, and their bond was unshakable. Still, the news that Maria had traveled to India was a shock to Jennifer, until she realized that it was the only viable option for the hardworking yet uninsured woman. Devastated, and desperate for answers, Jennifer takes emergency leave from school and heads to India, where relations with local officials go from sympathetic to sour as she presses for more 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, who has her own deep connection to Maria. Laurie, along with her husband, Dr. Jack Stapleton, rushes to the younger woman s side, discovering a sophisticated medical facility with little margin for error. As the death count grows, so do the questions, leading Laurie and Jennifer to unveil a sinister, multilayered conspiracy of global proportions.

Intervention

New York Times bestselling author Robin Cook returns with another ripped from the headlines medical thriller, where DNA science, biotechnology, and religion collide.I t’s been more than thirty years since New York City medical examiner Jack Stapleton’s college graduation and almost as long since he’d been in touch with former classmates Shawn Doherty and Kevin Murray. Once a highly regarded ophthalmologist, Jack’s career took a dramatic turn after a tragic accident that destroyed his family. But that, too, is very much in the past: Jack has remarried to longtime colleague and fellow medical examiner Laurie Montgomery and is the father of a young child. But his renegade, activist personality can’t rest, and after performing a postmortem on a young college student who had recently been treated by a chiropractor, Jack decides to explore alternative medicine. What makes some people step outside the medical establishment to seek care from practitioners of Eastern philosophies and even faith healers? Jack’s classmate Shawn Doherty is now a renowned archeologist and biblical scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose taste for good wine and generally deteriorating health are taking a toll on his career. He has recently obtained permission for a final dig beneath Saint Peter’s, and despite his long standing grudge against the Catholic Church, begins his research which eventually takes him to Jerusalem and Venice only to make a startling discovery with ecclesiastical and medical implications. And when James O’Rourke, now Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, gets wind of Shawn’s findings, he’s desperate to keep them from the public. James has strong political ambitions within the Church, but his association with Shawn threatens to undermine them. James turns to his old friend Jack to help protect an explosive secret one with the power to change lives forever.

Cure

Number one New York Times bestselling author and master of the medical thriller Robin Cook returns with another heart pounding story of medical intrigue. ‘Cook can write up a storm and spin a taut tale…
a master.’ Kirkus Reviews With her young son’s potentially fatal neuroblastoma in complete remission, New York City medical examiner Laurie Montgomery returns to work at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where she’s been employed for more than two decades. Worried about whether she still has what it takes after so much time away, Laurie finds her first case back to be a dangerous puzzler of the highest order, involving organized crime and two start up bio tech companies caught in a zero sum game. Against the advice of her colleagues and her husband, fellow medical examiner Jack Stapleton, Laurie is determined to solve the mystery the case comes to represent. Satoshi Machita, a former Kyoto University researcher, is set to own a valuable patent controlling pluripotent stem cells, which are destined to spark a trillion dollar industry of regenerative medicine. When he dies on a crowded New York subway platform, Laurie must decide whether his death was natural or something more fiendish. Behind the scenes, there are people who would like to see Laurie as far away from the investigation as possible. Despite threats against her, Laurie presses on, until threats are carried out against the person she loves most in the world: her son, JJ. Suddenly Laurie must face solving the crime and saving her son’s life.