Foreign Body, by Robin Cook
Yet another medical murder mystery by Robin Cook. This time, Robin travels to India, to New Delhi, and then to the burning ghats of Varanasi. Rather, his characters travel, all the way from US, to dig up a few dead bodies and study them for possibility of murder.
When Jennifer Hernandez, a fourth year medical student at UCLA hears about her grandmother’s death in a hospital in New Delhi, she does not weep. She demands that the hospital authorities preserve the body, and she takes the next flight to India. Does she react like this because she is an American, or because she is part of a murder mystery plot?
And because Jennifer is studying medicine, it is natural for her to have good friends in a forensic lab. But that they travel all the way to India, to cut up a dead body to find possible glitches, is rather far fetched. The only reason their presence is justified is that they are a couple going through infertility treatment. After all, Cook has to update us with some of the newest developments in the medical world.
And that includes medical tourism in India. Although these deaths happen in Indian Hospitals, the culprit is the greedy medical fraternity in America. We are talking of organized crime here, that which works hand in hand with the top beurocratic creeps who have their stakes in health industry of the US. But they are not all that organized, at least not as smart as the mafia. When they panic with Jennifer playing detective, they send two killers after her, and neither knows what the other is up to.
It is obvious that Cook visited India, probably to write this book. His impressions are superficial and fresh, though not very original. The poverty is represented by the beggars in the street,
and adventure is equivalent to sitting in an auto rickshaw for the first time, and holding on for dear life!
What is more interesting, however, is the difference between the approach to forensic medicine in India and US. It seems that Indian Hospitals, even ones made for the purpose of medical tourism, which means state of the art technology, do not have a regular mortuary to preserve their dead. It seems only a magistrate or the police can authorize an autopsy, and not a relative who suspects murder. This laid back attitude to the dead is portrayed as a ‘religious sentiment’. The Doms at Varanasi, the ‘cultural guardians of corpses’ further establish the untouchabitlity of the dead.
As a plot, Foreign Body moves smoothly. The killers, and their motif is given away in the beginning itself, the book merely catches up as the victim unravels the mystery and finally meets the murderer.
A page turner, that does give insight into the Indian psyche from a western perspective. Not a book for insomniacs, for it won’t let you sleep. Not till you have finished it.
Posted by indiaplazabooks 