Coma

Robin Cook is the Grandaddy of medical thriller writers, and I read this not long after it first came out. It is the chilling story of a medical student who investigates why normally fit and healthy patients are suddenly lapsing into coma. 

There is a strong and intelligent female protagonist, which is important to me. Yes, she can cry and even fall into the arms of a man, but she needs to be intelligent and stay strong, and Susan does that here. At the time, I was impressed by the level of authenticity but didn’t believe that anyone in the… show more.

Coma was probably the first medical mystery I read. 

Robin Cook parlayed his medical expertise into a medical thriller. Little did I know that when I read this as a high school student in the late 1970s, someday I would write my own mystery novel based on my medical expertise as a forensic pathologist.

I began medical school a year after Coma’s publication, and soon it was the rave among my classmates. Through a unique and imaginative plotline, Mr. Cook explored the possibility of what we as medical students feared becoming vulnerable to: the thought a physician could invoke god-like powers by means of advance medical knowledge and an idolizing patient population.