Deadly Protocol by Roger Corke
Dr Ronnie Ackerman wakes up in bed alone. Her boss, Nobel Prize-winner Professor Hasely Stone, and the man she got drunk with the night before, is downstairs in the sauna, brutally murdered.
Who did this, and why?
Stone had been working with total dedication on the ultimate cure for all cancers. Was he killed because he failed, or because he succeeded?
Ronnie panics, clears the house of all traces of her overnight stay, and then sets out on a mission to find out.
About the author
TV journalist Roger Corke has spent more years that he cares to remember travelling to all parts of the world, making investigative documentaries for series like the BBC's Panorama, Channel 4's Dispatches and ITV's World In Action and Tonight. It was whilst he was on a filming trip to America that he came up with the plot of Deadly Protocol.
"I was talking to a scientist working there who told me that they had made great strides in cancer research over the past few years." says Roger. "I asked him whether that meant a cure for cancer might come soon. His answered floored me. He said'they may have found a cure for cancer but an lot of people would have a lot to lose if it ever saw the light of day'. Straight away, the plot for a thriller jumped out at me."
Review
‘Deadly Protocol’ is a brilliant medical thriller that is full of twists and turns! This is the author's debut book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is packed full of action and has great characters to boot. I will be keeping an eye out for what he does next.
When Ronnie meets her boss Dr Hasley Stone for dinner, she doesn't know it will change her life. She ends up spending the night but when she wakes up she finds his body locked in the sauna. She gets out of there sharpish and reluctantly heads to work, at a high-tech research centre that concentrates on cancer research. There she meets a former patient, Daniel, an investigative journalist who tells her his survival story, which sets off a chase across the world, various murders and the reason? Stone may have found a cure for cancer and someone doesn't like that…
The premise of the book came across as original and dynamic and discusses ideas I would never have thought of. All the characters were likeable and realistic but my favourite was Leon and I would love to know more about his life in the Caribbean and the scrapes he gets himself into!
I flew through this book in a day as it was engrossing and never let up on the knocks and punches. It was an entertaining and compelling read.
Let me know if you pick this one up!