Spasm
A Gripping Medical Thriller from the Master of the Genre
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- € 4,99
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From Robin Cook, the ‘master of the medical thriller’ (The New York Times), fan favourites Jack and Laurie return in another fast-paced story about a deadly bioweapon that could disrupt the world order as they know it.
When Laurie Montgomery steps down from her position as chief medical examiner at the OCME, she and Jack decide to embark on a weekend getaway. And the timing couldn't be better when they receive a call from Jack’s old peer about a strange death and their potential association with an alarming upswing in Alzheimer’s cases in Essex Falls.
Agreeing to help, Laurie and Jack head upstate to find that Essex Falls is far from the rural idyll of their imagination. The residents appear earnestly intent on returning America to the 1950s. They are told of the deaths of two local troublemakers, who prior to their deaths had both begun to complain of muscle spasms, nausea and off-the-charts anxiety.
As Jack and Laurie investigate, they uncover a terrifying possibility: a dangerous bioweapon. In the wrong hands, it could threaten the lives of the entire town . . . and potentially all of America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The limp latest installment of Cook's long-running Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery series (after Manner of Death) is more of the same. The action kicks off with married medical examiners Jack and Laurie receiving a call from Bob Nielson, their former med school colleague, who works as the coroner for the small town of Essex Falls in Upstate New York. He needs help with a bizarre case: Essex Falls exterminator Ethan Jameson, founder of a right-wing militia called the Diehard Patriots, died by poisoning while preparing to welcome four Russian recruits to his cause. Though Nielson first chalks up Jameson's death to toxins he encountered on the job, an autopsy reveals a baffling chemical profile that he's never seen before. Jack and Laurie arrive to help Nielson investigate, and soon unravel a conspiracy involving a bioweapon that appears to induce dementia. While Cook holds back a handful of reveals for the climax, he gives up the bulk of the mystery too early, draining tension from the proceedings. Muddy prose (Jack sits on a staircase with "a moderate sense of acceptance and resolve tinged with appropriate fear") doesn't help. Even the author's fans might want to skip this one.
