Unnatural Causes

There's enough medical trauma--everything from gunshot wounds and drug overdoses to exploding appendixes and diabetic comas--in Robinson's latest novel about Dr. Evelyn Sutcliffe to fill a year's worth of ER and Chicago Hope episodes. There's also a moderately interesting mystery: just who is trying to kill Sutcliffe and several of her friends with exotic poisons? Is it the gorgeous young woman who's obsessively stalking Ev's psychiatrist boyfriend, stealing Ev's clothes and even dressing up as a Third World beggar to eavesdrop on private conversations? Does the threat have something to do with the anger surrounding the possible merger of Sutcliffe's hospital with one of two competing institutions? Could there be a connection between the poisonings and some financial hanky-panky involving a couple of rich and powerful Yalies? Through it all, Sutcliffe remains a solid island of medical and spiritual strength around which all troubled waters flow. An experienced emergency room technician herself, Robinson (Blood Run; First Cut) fills her narrative with obviously hard-earned wisdom, like this mantra mentally chanted over a poison victim: ""The first pulse to take is your own. Distance, distance. Treat the patient, not the poison. Lavage, absorption, catharsis."" She also can create characters who come to instant, vivid life--such as Gary Seligman, the activist nurse who's the first to die from poison. The novel ultimately contains too many friends and family members for all to breathe easily on the page, but nary a reader will complain of a shortage of gripping medical action. (Aug.)