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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

Product Description

Number-one New York Times-bestselling author and master of the medical thriller Robin Cook returns with another heart-pounding story of medical intrigue.

"Cook can write up a storm and spin a taut tale...a master." - Kirkus Reviews

With her young son's potentially fatal neuroblastoma in complete remission, New York City medical examiner Laurie Montgomery returns to work at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where she's been employed for more than two decades. Worried about whether she still has what it takes after so much time away, Laurie finds her first case back to be a dangerous puzzler of the highest order, involving organized crime and two start-up bio-tech companies caught in a zero- sum game. Against the advice of her colleagues and her husband, fellow medical examiner Jack Stapleton, Laurie is determined to solve the mystery the case comes to represent.

Satoshi Machita, a former Kyoto University researcher, is set to own a valuable patent controlling pluripotent stem cells, which are destined to spark a trillion-dollar industry of regenerative medicine. When he dies on a crowded New York subway platform, Laurie must decide whether his death was natural - or something more fiendish.

Behind the scenes, there are people who would like to see Laurie as far away from the investigation as possible. Despite threats against her, Laurie presses on, until threats are carried out against the person she loves most in the world: her son, JJ. Suddenly Laurie must face solving the crime - and saving her son's life.