Robin Cook

Writer / Physician

Robin Cook, a medical doctor, is a founding father of the "medical thriller" genre of popular fiction. His 1977 novel Coma was a sensation (and was turned into a film directed by another author/M.D., Michael Crichton). Cook's many other novels have included Outbreak (1987), Vital Signs (1991), and Toxin (1998). His 1999 novel Vector, the fictional tale of bioterrorists spreading anthrax in New York City, foreshadowed the real-life 2001 anthrax attacks in the U.S.

Extra credit: Cook is no relation to the former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who died in 2005.

Robin Cook appears with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in our loop on Doctors Who Write.