We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Vector
Product description Forensic pathologists Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery match wits with New York City cab driver Yuri Davydov, a former technician with the Soviet biological weapons program and disgruntled emigre+a7, who unleashes a deadly reign of terror on the streets of Manhattan. 300,000 first printing. Amazon.com Review Robin Cook's latest plot--the threat of an anthrax [bacterium] turned loose in a New York government building and in Central Park--is ripped straight from the headlines, and as such it may be charitably described as having a certain lumpish quality in the prose and an overabundance of cuteness in the lead characters. Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery, the dueling forensic pathologists who bounced off each other in Cook's Chromosome 6, collide and combine once again as a mad Russian cabdriver, who used to work in a Moscow bioweapons factory, comes up with a plan to punish America for not welcoming him with open arms. The cabby forms an unlikely alliance with two firemen who happen to be white supremacists; they fund his anthrax research to further their own lunatic schemes. Cook is, as ever, best at creating scenes of perfectly realized medical terror which plug into the paranoia of the moment. But if you want deep characters and sensitive description, read Fay Weldon. --Dick Adler From Publishers Weekly In this age of lethal bioweapons, there's a frightening logic in the idea that your next breath might kill you. Alas, Cook's latest, about an impending bioterrorist attack in New York City, is more ho-hum than horrifying. The premise has promise: cab driver Yuri Davydov is a disillusioned Russian immigrant haunted by his involvement in a tragic accidental release of government-produced anthrax that killed hundreds, including his mother. Armed with hatred for America and practical skills in how to build a biochemical weapon, he's joined forces with Curt Rogers and Steve Henderson of the People's Aryan Army. This catastrophic coalition aims to attack the Jacob Javits Federal Building and the Upper East Side; but for starters, Davydov tests his weapons on his own much-maligned wife and random, innocent rug merchant Jason Papparis. When medical examiner Jack Stapleton (last seen in Cook's Chromosome 6) does an autopsy on Papparis, the first of a series of plot-deadening coincidences occursAhe meets Davydov, who just happens to be cruising by to see if Papparis is dead. Too much "just happens" throughout this novel; worse, the investigators maddeningly bumble around obvious clues the reader has long since pieced together. Stapleton just happens to play basketball with the brother of Davydov's murdered wife; when autopsying the body of Aryan Army informant Brad Cassidy, he has a contrived hunch, and tests the body for anthrax poisoning. The whole plot, including the finale, hinges on happenstance, and Cook seems to know itAhis characters say things like, "What kind of weird coincidence could this be?" Cook's biotechnology research is rewarding, the pace is as pleasingly hectic as you'd expect from the author of Toxin, etc., and some of the characters are well drawn. But in the end, this potentially spine-tingling premise is undermined by a disappointing plot manifesting authorial machination rather than authentic, character-driven events. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews 39914471.499 Cook, Robin VECTOR Doctor Cook, King of the Mind-bending Medical Thriller (from Coma to Invasion to Toxin), returns with a swoon-worthy killer-poison more dangerous than any before it.. A vector, as in the title, is a carrier that transmits an infectious agent from one host to another. Back from Chromosome 6 (1997) are Drs. Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery, forensic pathologists in the New York Chief Medical Examiner's office. The first victim to come under their scope is Jason Papparis, a rug dealer who inhaled a fatal dust sent to him in a small boxhow grisly, how amusing, a rug dealer murdered by dust! Also on hand at the morgue is dead and mutilated young skinhead Brad Cassidy, victim of the People's Aryan Army, which has been recruiting skinheads as shock troops and "tapping into that well of hatred and violence the music has engendered" (in Cookprose, music can engender a well). The pathologists find that Papparis died of anthrax. As it happens, a disaffected Russian, Yuri Davydov, once a low-level worker in a Russian bioweapons lab, has managed to get himself into the US and turn Manhattan cab driver. An anti-Semite, Yuri feels dismissed as a human being by American Zionists and has set up a bioweapons lab in his basement in Brighton Beach, undertaking what he calls Operation Revenge. Meanwhile, he falls in with ex-military noncoms Steve Henderson and Curt Rogers, who are now NYC firemen as well as followers of the People's Aryan Army. The three hatch a plot to avenge Ruby Ridge by releasing Yuri's anthrax into the ventilation system of the 40-story Jacob Javits building, while Yuri also really wants to stick it to Manhattan's Jews by encircling Central Park with a ring of the incredibly infectious toxin. What can a mere pair of pathologists do to stop this crew of nuts? Cook himself believes that a bioterrorist event is, without question, locked into our future. Not really a thought to minimize, as his cautionary tale observes. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. About the Author Dr. Robin Cook is the author of thirty previous books, most recently Nano, and is credited with popularizing the medical thriller with his wildly successful first novel, Coma. He divides his time between Boston and Florida. His most recent bestsellers include Death Benefit, Cure, and Intervention.
