Robin Cook: Godplayer (USA 2000)

From the Publisher:
Working with her husband, a respected cardiac surgeon, at Boston Memorial is a dream come true for Dr. Cassandra Kingsley. Until a series of mysterious deaths rocks the pre-eminent hospital -- and Cassandra's most frightening suspicions are realized... Only Robin Cook could portray with such terrifying brilliance what happens when the one place dedicated to saving lives starts taking them...

"A tissue-tingling thriller... keeps you poised on the sleek points of steel pins and flashing hypodermic needles." -- The Detroit News

DR. ROBIN COOK, a graduate of Columbia Medical School, finished his postgraduate medical training at Harvard. He is the author of Shock, Abduction, Vector, Toxin, Chromosome 6, Contagion, and numerous other bestselling novels.

Robin Cook: Godplayer. Berkley Books, ISBN: 042517638X (September, 2000), 322 p., $7.99.

Robin Cook: Godplayer (UK 1984 / 5th printing)

From the Publisher:
In Boston Memorial Hospital, SSD (Sudden Surgical Death) has reached epidemic proportions. Post-operative patients are dying without reason.

Pathologist Robert Seibert has found a pattern among the victims. They're either mentally defective, terminally ill or of dubious morality - and someone in the hospital has the access and knowledge to kill them.

When Seibert becomes the next victim after undergoing minor surgery, Cassandra Cassidy, a beautiful pathologist turned psychologist, takes it upon herself to stop the killings even as she fights to save her marriage to the hospital's top cardiac surgeon. But when she lies in bed after an eye operation, she cannot see the person who has entered her room...

GODPLAYER is an enthralling and plausible chiller by Robin Cook, bestselling author of COMA, which maintains a relentless pace to the very last page.

'Gripping... fascinating... marvellous' -- NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Robin Cook: Godplayer. London: Pan Books, 1984 ISBN: 033028259X (5th printing, no date given), 293 p., £3.50.

Robin Cook: Godplayer (USA 1984)

From the Publisher:
THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MANY WAYS TO DIE.
BUT NOW, IN AN ULTRA-MODERN HOSPITAL,
THERE WAS A NEW ONE.
THE MOST HORRIFYING ONE OF ALL.

GODPLAYER

"Nerve-wracking hospital horrors!" -- Chicago Sun-Times

"A master of techno-horror... Plan to read this one during the daylight hours, preferably in the company of old and trusted friends." -- Kansas City Star

"A tissue-tingling thriller... keeps you poised on the sleek points of steel pins and flashing hypodermic needles!" -- Detroit News

"IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT DOWN... A CRESCENDO OF ACTION TO A SMASHING FINISH... DON'T MISS THIS ONE!" -- San Diego Tribune

A LITERARY GUILD ALTERNATE SELECTION

Robin Cook: Godplayer. Signet Books #AE 2950, ISBN: 0451129504 (June, 1984), 319 p., $4.50.

Robin Cook: Godplayer (USA 1983)

From the Publisher:
From the consummate master of techno-horror comes a spellbinding novel of medicine gone mad.
It starts as the marriage of true minds -- two gifted young physicians burning with the will to heal, soul mates as well as lovers. From that first moment in the medical center when pathology resident Cassandra Cassidy meets brilliant cardiac surgeon Thomas Kingsley, she knows they are meant to be together. Forced by a deteriorating eye condition to switch from her chosen field to psychiatry, Cassandra needs the support and approval the charismatic doctor so passionately offers; and Thomas, privileged only child of a banker-industrialist, finds in the beautiful and vulnerable girl the boundless devotion he so desperately requires.

But as Thomas continues his meteoric rise, what should have been fairy-tale happiness begins to disintegrate. Saintly to an adoring public, Thomas is something other to the woman who loves him -- an erratic and hostile stranger whose inexplicable rages and bizarre behavior are increasingly disturbing.

As the solidity of Cassandra's marriage begins to crumble, the dependable security of the hospital world around her seems equally menaced. Cassandra is convinced that someone is killing terminal patients -- someone who holds the power of life and death in his hands and who wields it like the angel of death.

Against her husband's furious objections, Cassandra takes it upon herself to stop the killings even as she fights to save her marriage. Only after she stumbles onto a terrifying discovery is she forced to realize that her dreams have metamorphosed into nightmares and that her search for the truth has opened the floodgates of unimaginable horror.

Godplayer is Robin Cook's most stunning work to date -- a chilling confrontation of personalities in a hospital setting where the innocent too easily become the victims -- and a powerful indictment of medicine's tragic inability to police itself.

Dr. Robin Cook, a graduate of Columbia University Medical School, has also been a professional diver who served as an aquanaut for Sea Lab and worked at Jacques Cousteau's oceanographic institute in the south of France. Currently on leave from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Institute, he lives in New Hampshire with his wife, Barbara.

Robin Cook: Godplayer. Putnam's, ISBN: 039912764X (May, 1983), 368 p., $14.95.