Spasm

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. Agent: Erica Spellman-Silverman, Trident Media Group. (Dec.)