Charlatans

I've been a Robin Cook fan a long time but this has got to be one of the worse books he's ever written. Predictable and just a lousy story. Save your money. If you are a Cook fan you should know this is just not what you would expect from this author.

I have read and loved every book by this author. I found this book to be lacking the usual dynamic story line and suspense. This was the worst ending. I felt like it just left the reader hanging. Sorry, but I would not recommend this book, it's a disappointing waste of time.

A good story, laboriously slow in the beginning, it paints a most realistic picture of an academic surgical residency and the feet of clay that exist within even the most revered medical institutions.The book explores the changes in medical education brought about by computers, data and the internet. Sadly the author appears to suggest that mannequins and computerized learning can reduce the time required for A physician’s or surgeon’s education and even an acceptance of a Mexican stand off with regard to qualification, ethics and political expediency.While anesthesiology and radiology may lend itself to mannequins and images, Anna’s failure to ascertain that Vincent was actually NPO, illustrates the loss of continuity and basic history taking lost in today’s migration to standardized patients, medical teams, preceptors and EMRs.For over twenty five hundred years, the Physician’s, integrity and humanity accounted for something like a third of the patients ability to heal and today to find the way through an increasingly complex, greedy and profit motivated system. Unfortunately today’s medical education reform with short cuts and reduced training hours throws the baby out with the bath. The author might think again the shortcuts and most especially the dangerously poor quality of computer, EMR, records, easily quantification by the US international reading in most all aspects of the global burden of disease, GBD, statistics.

Also, very entertaining, as usual. I've been a huge fan of Dr. Cook since the first time I read Coma. I've read and re-read all of his books (as far as I know.) Before reading Coma, I was already interested in medicine because of severe illnesses in my family. I've particularly enjoyed Dr. Cook's work because I know he is a doctor and, beyond that, he researches his topic extensively. Having recently been able to "connect " with him via his FB page and interact with one of my favorite authors has been a great pleasure for me. In Charlatans, I learned some things about technology that I didn't know and, I've been a self-taught "computer guru" since 1985 while in the Air Force, when the internet was still for military and government use and we were still using punchcards on a computer as big as a room to input daily data. I also, as usual when reading one of Dr. Cook's medical thrillers, learned more than I knew about medicine. Thank you, Dr. Cook, for your dedication to bringing excellent, timely, and compelling work to your fans!

Cook has become so trite and predictable, I've come to the realization he is faltering perhaps due to age, in his novels. He uses some big words infrequently to perhaps show he has some intelligence but his verbiage is incredibly simpleton like. Every story is the same except with a slight twist. He could have done a better job in describing each character and in his failing to do so, I was unimpressed with the plot. For a person as smart as the hero was, he is pictured as a paranoid individual who was by all intents and purposes to be highly skilled, organized and well adjusted in crisis situations. To be highly insecure at the same time is rather unreasonable in my mind.The God like characters of the doctors in this book were a bit over done as I don't believe some of these traits to exist in a hospital as highly sought after by medical school graduates who generally come from Ivy League educations.The lack of vetting was incredible and with the afterthoughts penned by cook himself leads a person to feel rather uncertain of his/her own doctor as scary as that may seem. To be able to adjust records to reflect education and certifications is absolutely horrendous and unthinkable. In this day and age, one would hope the institutions would have better security with impenetrable fire walls.

This story is not as good as some of his other books. However, saying that it does look at the interesting concept of a virtual medical world, where online doctors are readily available, but can you be sure who they really are! He also looks at Virtual Reality and how people create false personality's to play mental games with other people. They become so good at it they change their own belief systems, so that are not sure who they really are anymore.One point of interest is Facebook has over two million users and just over fifteen thousand are 'sock puppets' or fake persona. How can one trust The' internet' world- when you can not be sure the person you are texting or reading about is real, this is a real concept for identity theft in the global sense, when you can copy and paste and change almost any document or picture to do whatever you want it to do or be.How do you know the person writing this review is real?

not up to Robin Cooks usual standard.long drawn out and weak story line. disappointed.

I liked it as it related to my field of occupation and was impressed by it being well written and amazed at how digitisation will be the future in medicineWill recommend to my friends and family and colleagues

It is different from the other books by Robin Cook. It is not as good as chromosome or outbreak etc.

Another great book from Robin Cook. He never let's us down.

Enjoyable.

Excellent holiday read

Great medical thriller. What a change from the usual killing spree. This a really good suspense novel with great alphabetical wording. The book is well researched and the story quite unusual. I really enjoyed this book coupled with the fact that the grammar and the words used are quite researched and not used as much nowadays. In the current world, people prefer to shorten their sentences by using sentences much similar to spoken language. This book on the other hand really challenges your English written literature.Although the ending is a bit of a deception, I guess at the end, it all comes back to greed or the nature of self preservation.All in all a great read that keeps you on the edge of your seats. The writing is excellent and way beyond the usual storyteller that we are use to.With the deception of fake news this book is very welcomed in the world of medical suspense. Although the conclusion and epilogue is far fetched, the book makes you better aware of social media and the corresponding narcissism that spurts out of it.

Spannendes Buch, in dem auch Charaktere aus "Host" wieder mitspielen. Das Ende ist anders, als man es erwarten würde. Allgemein gibt es in dem Buch einige unerwartete Wendungen, die die Geschichte noch spannender machen.Medizinische Fakten eingehalten und nicht so falsch dargestellt, wie in den TV-Serien.Ein Buch zum sofort Durchlesen!

I just can't get over the ending. It didn't make sense, nor was it is any way satisfying. I'm confused if the intention was to skip explanations about what happened after Noah understood what was going on or if I'm missing some pages in my kindle because it ended abruptly and the last 9 pages felt like they skipped whole chunks of time. I actually cannot think of another book that has had such a strange and deeply unsatisfying resolution. It has coloured the entire book and left me with many unresolved questions.Noah was a nice person but it was hard to understand his connection with Ava. Her character, back story and the reasons certain things were taking place didn't sit right. She seemed like a robot. I couldn't feel anything towards her and surely one of the main characters should stir some kind of emotion when you read about them, love them or hate them.The story didn't flow well, I wasn't "thrilled", it didn't race to a satisfying conclusion that got the blood pumping, though it did finish fast it feel like the author got bored and decided that was enough and finished the book in a few pages.I normally love Robin Cook's books so much, he is a fabulous storyteller usually so if this was your first Robin Cook novel please don't let it put you off his earlier work. But this one was a big huge miss for me.

Yo no puedo decir nada malo de este libro porque soy fan incondicional de Robin Cook. Tengo todos sus libros, los últimos 15 de ellos en inglés y a pesar de usar algunas palabras técnicas es bastante fácil de entender. Muchos de estos libros los he comprado con meses de antelación por lo que ya se puede notar el grado de fanatismo que tengo. La historia me gustó bastante y como muchos de sus libros llega un momento en el que te atrapa y quieres llegar al final de la historia cuanto antes.

Robin Cook, after his path breaking Coma, has never failed to thrill the reader with his medical whodunnits. In his latest, he breaks new ground in cyber crime and has us on the edge of our seats most of the time. It is frightening to see how easily modern security agencies can become laws unto themselves and literally get away with murder and worse, given big money and political patronage.As he himself says in his footnote in the book, will we believe that all the impressive diplomas and certificates adorning the walls of our doctor's office next time we visit?

Robin Cook fans will not be Disappointed. Someone might try to compare this book with his earlier bestsellers, but it will be worthwhile to consider that the fields of malpractice are changing in the modern medical world and the writer had to keep up with these.

This story was written to bring out all your feelings one at a time. It was exciting, so interesting that I read it straight through. Could not put it down. Do not miss this book of his, I think this is best in a long time.

It is high time Robin Cook takes a break. There is not much suspense.I didn't find any major thrill element as well. Also, a lot of pages could have been reduced due to heavy descriptions of each location.After a point, you just end up skipping the same.