Lifebank

by Howard A. Olgin

The lives of four people--a tough street cop, a brilliant doctor, an ambitious medical researcher, and a young Mayan boy--become intertwined when a confidential high-tech experiment threatens all of humankind

Genres: Novels

384 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1995

Reviews

[Vero]

Juste lit 100 pages et le trill pas assez bon trop lent avant de rrentrer dedans jai arreter de le lire

[Kristin]

I'll admit, I knew where this book was heading about 1/3 of the way through, though that direction wasn't revealed until much later in the book. Laparoscopic surgery + poor people in the US and Mexico + a twisted doctor with delusions of grandeur and there was one glaring answer I could come up with, but I won't reveal it so as not to spoil the book.
The description on the back is a bit misleading, as it provides blurbs about 4 storylines, but really, only 2 are pursued with any great detail, that of the woman doctor finding her husband dead in LA, and the scientist at the research lab with a revolutionary breakthrough. I was a bit disappointed, as the story opens in Cincinnati, where a cop has just investigated the latest in what is being dubbed the work of the 'Keyhole Killer', whose victims have been eviscerated but the only stab wounds are small, akin to removing the refrigerator of the house through its keyhole. And for the majority of the book, that is all we hear of this plotline, save for a couple small intersections with the other 2 plots, but I thought this one sounded the most interesting of them all. The 4th plotline, involving a Mexican boy who disappears after flying his kite, is presented late in the book and hardly deserving of its own blurb on the back.
It was interesting going through the book, as it was written in the time when laparoscopic surgery was just beginning to be a viable way to repair certain ailments with minimal scarring and recovery time. Had the book been written today, the main plot twist would have still been considered a revolutionary medical advancement, but it would have been much harder to trace the culprit, as there would be many more doctors doing it. That said, readers know all along who the bad guy is, it's just a matter of figuring out what his big secret is and how to punish him for whatever bad stuff he might have done.

[Judy]

This book started out very slow. It did get better but it was not believable at all.

[Denisa]

Another rating: 8/10