Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery series

The Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery series is an ongoing series of New York Times Bestselling medical thrillers by Robin Cook that follows pathologist Jack Stapleton and his co-worker (and later wife) Laurie Montgomery as they attempt to solve the various mysteries that come across their path.^[1]

Synopsis

The series follows Jack Stapleton, a medical examiner and pathologist who spends most of his free time focusing on various medical cases in order to avoid having to think about the deaths of his wife and children. He teams up with his co-worker and fellow pathologist Laurie Montgomery in order to solve various crimes, with the two eventually falling in love and marrying. Laurie was earlier in a relationship with Lou, a police officer and Jack and Laurie's mutual friend.

Chromosome 6

When notorious underworld figure Carlo Franconi is gunned down, his Mafioso competitors become prime suspects. Suspicions are fueled when Franconi's body disappears from the city morgue before it can be autopsied—much to the embarrassment of the chief medical examiner and the mayor, but to the amusement of the morgue's resident cynic, forensic pathologist Dr. Jack Stapleton.

A few days later, when the mutilated, unidentifiable body of a "floater" arrives on the autopsy table, Jack is troubled by the case. While unidentified bodies routinely make their way to the medical examiner's office, what piques Jack's curiosity is not so much this body's missing head, hands, and feet, but its missing liver.

Aided by his colleague Dr. Laurie Montgomery, Jack identifies the corpse as the missing Franconi, but this positive identification in no way solves the mystery. Who killed Carlo Franconi? And was the triggerman responsible for the theft of Franconi's body and its eventual mutilation? Jack and Laurie's search for the truth leads them to the steamy jungles of equatorial Africa, where they discover a sinister cabal whose stock-in-trade involves surgical procedures a step beyond the latest in current technology and a Promethean leap beyond accepted medical ethics.

With Robin Cook's signature cutting-edge suspense, Chromosome 6 combines the fast action of a nerve-jangling thriller with the medical possibilities of the all-too-near future.

Bibliography

1. Blindsight (1992)
2. Contagion (1995)
3. Chromosome 6 (1997)
4. Vector (1999)
5. Marker (2005)
6. Crisis (2006)^[2]
7. Critical (2008)
8. Foreign Body (2009)
9. Intervention (2009)^[3]
10. Cure (2010)
11. Death Benefit (2012)

Reception

Critical reception for the series as a whole has been mixed to positive,^[4][5] with later novels receiving mixed reviews from critics.^[6][7] Sales for the series have been good, with several of the novels placing on the New York Times Bestseller lists.

Television series

In 1999 Cook announced that he was in talks with Jerry Bruckheimer to create a television series centered around the novels.^[8] No further information has been given about a potential series adaptation.

References