Cure

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. --Kristine Huntley