The dialogue is very contrived and the relationships aren’t very natural but the baseline story about E. coli and food safety is interesting- and worrisome.

Lost the bookmark. Too bothered to look where I stopped. 

The subject of this book was so shocking and disgusting! I couldn't believe that things like that could really happen and it's scary to think about. There's so much going on behind closed doors that people just believe are being taken care of in the safety and health of the public but in reality none of us know that. This book definitely paints a very clear picture of the potential risks of eating meat and how easy it is to slip up and get sick from something very serious.

This makes the 2nd time I have DNFed this book. I have no clue why I kept it on the shelf after the 1st time. 

It's dry, and very slow getting into the story. 

Absolutely one of the most ridiculous and clumsily written books I've read. Much of the book is a pamphlet on the issues in the meat industry poorly disguised as dialogue. In general it's just not very good. 

Oh, Robin Cook. You were my gateway to reading adult books when I first read Coma; as a bookish teenager who wanted to be a doctor, I loved it so much! 
I collected all of his books,  buying hardbacks as soon as they were published, up until some time in the 1990s when it was clear the quality was dropping off. 
Recently I reread Coma and found it hilariously dated, and not in a good way. Sexist, mildly racist, reminiscent of a far nastier time to be a female doctor; nevertheless it was a great story and it was written with care, if not much skill.
However, I picked up a copy of Toxin in a tiny village op-shop to see how far things had gone south since the last time I read a Robin Cook novel. The answer is…very far south indeed. The standard Cook plot has been recycled yet again. The MC is a doctor(surprise!) , who stumbles upon a vast conspiracy which is tangentially medical in nature, and spends the book fighting off the forces of evil, somehow surviving unscathed having revealed the dastardly plot to a wondering world. In Toxin,  though, the first half of the book deals with the illness and eventual death of the MC’s only child. Despite this horrific tragedy, the Dr (who sawed open his own daughter’s chest in ICU to try cardiac massage, only to find her heart literally dissolving in his hands in a truly abhorrent scene) immediately swings into investigation mode. The child’s mother is almost equally unemotional, supporting her violent ex husband in his insane plans. It’s a truly bizarre portrayal of parents losing a child to a sudden and awful fatal illness. I can’t imagine being able to function at the most basic level for many weeks if such a thing happened to me and my kids touch wood. It made me wonder how much of this book was actually written by a human person.

An excellent story about the real dangers of animal agriculture and our government.