Organized crime, international espionage, and kidnapping only mildly enliven Cook's methodical ninth medical thriller featuring husband-and-wife medical examiners Laurie Montgomery and Jack Stapleton (after Intervention). Laurie's first case back in the Manhattan medical examiner's office, after giving birth to the couple's firstborn, John "JJ" Junior, appears to be a routine case of death by natural causes. But Laurie suspects otherwise, and her dogged investigation uncovers a diabolical poisoning and a plot involving the Mafia and rival Japanese gangsters laundering money for a shady start-up firm promoting stem-cell research. To deter Laurie's prying, the thugs snatch JJ, and suddenly the intrigue gets very personal. Cook provides an interesting study of the strange bedfellows that the biotech business and the mob might make, but he telegraphs all his plot twists so far in advance that there's little suspense other than how quickly Laurie will tip to them. Even devoted Cook fans may find that the crimes and subterfuges are resolved too swiftly and perfunctorily. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Cook's latest thriller opens not with a microscopic medical event, as so many of his previous novels have, but with theft at a research lab in Kyoto, Japan. The perpetrator is Ben Corey, a doctor and the founder of a company designed to profit from stem cell research, and his crime is stealing away Satoshi Machita, one of Kyoto University's top researchers. But soon after he sneaks Satoshi and his family into the U.S., Satoshi disappears the target of an attack orchestrated by the Japanese yakuza and the American Mafia. Satoshi's body turns up at the Office of the County Medical Examiner in New York City, where Laurie Montgomery, just returned from maternity leave, is assigned the case. Though there's no identification on the body and he appears to have died of natural causes, Laurie digs deeper, much to the consternation of the killers. When Laurie refuses to back off the case, the Mafia threatens the young son she shares with fellow ME Jack Stapleton. The dialogue is clunky and the mobsters dull, but readers invested in Cook's married ME duo will rapidly turn the pages as danger finds Laurie and Jack once again.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2010 Booklist

Throw biotech billions, mobsters, Yakuza heavies and brainiac baddies into a metaphorical Mixmaster, whip on high, and you have this souffl of a thriller from Cook (Intervention, 2009, etc.).Excepting Victor Frankenstein, lab-based scientists aren't supposed to be adept at breaking and entering. Yet Benjamin Corey, geneticist and entrepreneur, puts himself to service in just that capacity, busting into a Tokyo research center to jack some notebooks owned by one Satoshi Machita, who is just then preparing to jump jobs and make some real dough. Alas, fate has something else in mind for Satoshi, which puts Laurie Montgomery in action. Readers of Cook's other recent offerings will know Laurie as the dazzlingly efficient coroner whose young son was snatched from the jaws of death with the help of a few million stem cells. (Take that, George Bush!) Now it's up to her to determine whether Satoshi's demise was on the up and up, an answer on which the legal ownership of a miracle-medical patent potentially worth a trillion bucks might hinge. Can Big Crime stand up to Big Pharma? Not a chance, but the baddies try, with the Mafia and the Yakuza even joining forces. Cook's thriller satisfies the basic requirements in about the way a Twinkie satisfies the body's need for energyit does the job, but there's tastier and much more nutritious stuff out there. For one thing, this one has a little too much clumsy exposition and explaining on the fly, with clunky results. Yet Cook's new concoction has plenty of entertaining toxicology and biochem geekery to keep matters instructive, and enough neat twists of the plot to keep them interesting as well.Not Cook's best dish, but a filling snack all the same.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Cook's 30th novel follows Intervention (2009), also available from Recorded Books/Penguin Audio and read by multiple Audie Award winner George Guidall. Medical forensics, intrigue, Japanese yakuza and the American mafia, and kidnap consultants all figure into this extraordinary fictional treatise on international business, stem-cell research, and organized crime. Listeners will feel compelled to look further into the potential health impacts of pluripotent stem cell (iPS) research; they can visit Cook's official website, robincookmd.com, for his take on the profits available to those who obtain iPS patents. Guidall masterfully reads this well-researched, expertly plotted thriller; highly recommended. ["A fascinating tale that never slows down," read the review of the New York Times best-selling Putnam hc, LJ Xpress Reviews, 6/25/10.-Ed.]-Cliff Glaviano, formerly with Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.