Bellevue – Robin Cook’s lame attempt at a supernatural thriller
My Rating – 2.5 out of 5
Plot Summary of Bellevue
Robin Cook meets Stephen King….. Well, not quite, in fact not at all! Unfortunately, over the years, Robin Cook’s mastery over the Medical thriller genre has been slipping. The author who shook the world with Coma and Sphinx, has really slipped. With his books rarely making The New York Times bestseller list, in the recent past. Of late, only the novels involving his long-standing protagonists – Jack and Laura Stapleton have done moderately well. Rest have fared rather modestly, testimony to the fact that quantity doesn’t matter, only quality does.
The premise of the book is promising. It involves generational medical pedigree and breakthrough practices that saved countless lives. Some questionable practices were also followed, steeped in the practices and superstitions of those times. Mitt is a first year resident. He comes from a family of renowned surgeons. His family has been linked to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital since the early nineteenth century. He and his classmate Andrea are on their first day as Residents, and Mitt is the Doctor-on-call for the night.
But things go awry right from the beginning and that causes Mitt to doubt if he is cut out for this life or not. But the attraction for a life in the field of medicine and the fact that he’s trained so long and hard for it, stop him. With the exception of his father, who is a Banker, generations of Fullers have been Doctors. Surgeons who have been renowned and pioneers of their time. Even some of the Doctors Mitt comes across on his first day, seem to be aware of his family’s history. That is both a benefit as well as an impediment at times to true learning.
From his first day/night at the hospital, Mitt and the patients allotted to him for routine procedures develop complications. There seem to be no relation or commonality between either the patients or their conditions. To add to this uneasy burden, Mitt has hallucinatory visions of patients in period dresses from 100 years ago or a crowd of them in different stages of surgical procedures. Though they seem to cause him no harm, but their continuous presence troubles Mitt. Andrea, however, does not suffer from any of it and seems to be sailing through her residency.
Such disparate experiences, only confirm Mitt’s fear that there is something wrong with him and the answer to all his troubles lie within the dark and foreboding old hospital. And like in so many disaster movies and B-grade horror flicks, the curiosity gets the better of him. While the story unfolds in the corridors of the new hospital, medical emergencies seem to have a single common factor, Mitt. Till this part, things were still ok, but it starts to unravel soon after. Ghosts, supernatural entities all come into play now, making the read more and more ludicrous! Rather than going taut with suspense, this moves towards being predictable and amusing.
Conclusion – Bellevue
I wish Dr. Cook had chosen a different path to take the novel. The ending is not surprising but rather lame and tepid. Overall, the novel ebbs and flows. There are some really slow passages in the book and while Dr. Cook really brings some really good medical insights to a thriller, the supernatural bits are scarcely believable. There are times I struggled to move ahead, and felt the book is too long with a skeletal storyline.
I also think, there is a large section of readers out there, who love a book with a supernatural twist, this might be for them. In conclusion, Bellevue was a disappointing read for me and I will not advise it to anyone, until you’re willing to read anything to while away your time. For me, there has to be better options.
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