Toxin (Thorndike Press Large Print Paperback Series) | 
| Author: Robin Cook
Publisher: G. K. Hall & Company
Category: Book
Buy New: $101.40
New (1) Used (7) from $5.50
Avg. Customer Rating:  260 reviews
Sales Rank: 2177741
Format: Large Print
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 515
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 0783801319
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780783801315
ASIN: 0783801319
Publication Date: April 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Book is brand new, and has never been opened. Thousands of satisfied customers!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Just when you thought it was safe to eat a hamburger again, Robin Cook--master of medical mysteries, deadly epidemics, and creepy comas--returns with an all too likely villain drawn right from current headlines: the American meat industry. If you've ever wondered where the E. coli bacteria comes from, and exactly how it can ravage the human body, destroying everything in its path, this is the book for you. As usual, Cook delivers solid information, well-researched medical arcana, and a scathing indictment of managed health care. His protagonist, Kim Regis, is an all-too-typical ego-driven surgeon, whose arrogance and invulnerability set him up to be brought low by the deadly toxin that takes the life of his young daughter. Sparing no time and barely a paragraph to reflect on his loss, Regis goes right after the culprit, a meat-packing behemoth that brings dead and diseased animals to the slaughterhouse, breaking every health regulation in the book. The scenes set on the killing floor and in the boning rooms will make a vegetarian out of the most confirmed red-meat eater. Toxin is a heart-pounding thriller that hits very close to home. --Jane Adams
Book Description
Newly divorced surgeon Dr. Kim Regis is determined to remain a good father to his only son, Selden. On a special night out, Kim takes Seldon to his favorite fast-food restaurant for a feast of burgers and fries. But the good time turns to tragedy: the young boy becomes gravely ill and dies as a result of poisoning by E. coli. bacteria found in the meat. Was Seldon's death a result of shoddy food-handling practices? Or was it a sophisticated case of product tampering - by a rival fast-foot giant or a disgruntled employee? Or perhaps by someone with a score to settle with Kim? Taking a leave from his surgical practice, Kim devotes his energies to solving the mystery full time. But he immediately hits a brick walls: a code of silence more impenetrable than anything he has ever encountered in his medical career. Instead of a cold-shoulder reception, however, Kim is soon met with a boot and a fist as thugs attempt to quash his inquiry. Aided by his ex-wife, Kim pursues a trail of deadly evidence, uncovering complicity and guilt stretching from the slaughterhouse floor to the corporate boardroom. Racing against time before more are poisoned, the two come face-to-face with the shocking and elusive truth. And in their life-and-death search for answers, they rediscover the reasons they first fell in love. With trademark pulse-pounding flair, Robin Cook delivers a cutting-edge thriller, borrowing from today's fears and tomorrow's medical technology.
Download Description
The question - just how safe is America's meat supply? - stands as the basis for Robin Cook's most startling, and important, novel.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 255 more reviews...
 Fact stranger than Fiction February 28, 2008
Isn't anyone scared that what was on the news last week (i.e. the CA packing plant videos) five years after I read this for an ethics for scientists class at Towson. It's a shame the folks at the FDA didn't read it!
 Irritatingly Cliche-ridden November 13, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I wanted to slap the protagonist, slap his ex-wife, slap his girlfriend and, until she got sick, slap his kid (what 10-year-old do you know who says "fabulous"?). These characters are some of the most unsympathetic and poorly fleshed-out I've seen in Cook's books. In order to make us care about his causes, he needs to make us care about his characters. The egocentric surgeon, the bimbo girlfriend, the resentful ex-wife, the spoiled, manipulative child, the uncaring, evil corporation - we've seen these cliches a million times.
 Captivating, Scary, Sad October 8, 2007
This book was recommended to me by a friend and I couldn't put down because it really drew me in. I was anxious to see if the father ever was able to find out why his girl died. It was about meat contamination and the scary part was that it was so believable that it could really happen.
Karen Arlettaz Zemek, Author of "My Funny Dad, Harry"
An interesting view of the mind of the author March 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I guess other reviewers have described the plot well enough. Perhaps I'm biased by my own observations as a Medical Technologist, but I found myself wanting to strangle the protagonist Dr. Reggis for his combination of arrogance and bad judgement. His daughter might not have died from the contaminated hamburger, had he not been dismissive of her complaint to him that it was undercooked. Had he reported the evidence of toxic E. coli to the health department (which the doctors treating his daughter would have been required to do anyway in real life), the contaminated lot could have been properly sampled, the lot quarantined, and the USDA inspector not been murdered.
Besides his anti-meat agenda the author has his other demons, blaming evil lawyers, insurance companies, and hospital administrators, and self-indulgent news media for physicians' problems, which may not be entirely false, but glosses over how physicians have brought some of this upon themselves. That Dr. Reggis is unfamiliar with the concept of labeling a sample strikes me as quite realistic, along with Dr. Cook not portraying that in a critical manner. The author uses statistics on E. coli mortality that are higher than CDC's statistics, but which are claimed to be CDC's statistics.
Of course, like Dr. Cook's book "Coma", it is a work of fiction. Given that it is what it is, I think the author missed an opportunity to, without significantly changing the story line, give it a little wry humor by having Dr. Reggis advise the professional killer "Don't eat the hamburger."
Awful Characters February 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Somewhere in the Midwest, two man who are supposed to take away a sick cow to be killed instead sell it to a slaughterhouse, where the meat is turned into hamburger. The hamburger makes its way to a fast food restaurant, the Onion Ring, and into the body of Becky Reggis, ten-year-old daughter of a cardiac surgeon.
Becky is a promising ice skater and some would say she is on her way toward the Olympics. She is also the light of her parents' lives, especially now that they are divorced and don't get along very well with each other.
After a weekend spent with her father when she eats a burger at the Onion Ring that isn't fully cooked, Becky begins to feel very sick. At first everyone thinks she just has a touch of the flu, and nothing is done for her. But then she begins to get much worse--her stomach flu is turning into something serious.
When Becky is diagnosed with an E. coli infection, her father is determined to find out the cause of her illness, no matter how dangerous that mission is.
I liked the medical descriptions, and the slaughterhouse descriptions were eye-opening. I turned vegetarian for about five minutes. The idea of something like this really happening is horrifying. However, the characters, especially Dr. Reggis on his secret quest for answers, were wooden and unsympathetic.
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