Shock

Two Harvard graduates, Joanna Meissner and Deborah Cochrane, answer the Wingate Clinics advertisement for egg donors, an easy way to earn a staggering 45,000 dollars each. The Clinic, set in a former Victorian mental hospital with its own morgue and crematorium, is as creepy as they come, and the atmosphere immediately sets the reader on edge. Ignoring reports about two missing women connected with the clinic, Joanna and Deborah undergo the medical procedures without a hitch, buy a condominium and travel to Venice for a year to finish their theses. On return Joanna becomes obsessed with the desire to know whether her donated eggs have been successfully transplanted. The clinics obvious refusal to divulge the information leads both women to disguise themselves and get jobs at the Clinic in order to hack into the secret computer records. They plan to satisfy their personal curiosity and leave within a couple of days. The information revealed, however, is much more than they bargained for. The Clinics directors are an unscrupulous bunch practising illegal cloning and worse. By then the womens lives are in danger and there is no escape from the guarded barbed wire compound. Cook, a Boston physician turned writer, is a master of the medical thriller, with more than 20 other titles to his name. He knows his technical detail better than his characters, who are weakly drawn. There is too much inconsequential dialogue between Deborah and Joanna and he skids over implausible holes in the story by driving the pace the book is certainly a page-turner. But its a snappy read for all its flaws, even if the ending is disappointing and falls rather flat. (Kirkus UK)