A vacation turns deadly in this scary medical thriller.
Seeking a reprieve from NYC politics, Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery head to the Adirondack town of Essex Falls to help Jack's old medical school classmate investigate a cluster of rapid onset Alzheimer's cases and the sudden death of a formerly healthy pest control worker. Comfortably situated in a huge historic mansion for their summer getaway, things start to go awry for Jack when one of the bodies they planned to autopsy goes missing from the morgue. Instantly, Jack is pulled into a situation involving white extremist militia and a terrifying prion bio-weapon designed to trigger lethal neurological collapse.
This is definitely a relevant plot that pits forensic science against domestic radicalization and terrorism. While the pacing is slow at first, with a lot of minute and banal detail, the tension builds as the cause of the spasms and the neurological deterioration is revealed. There's a lot of interesting scientific detail about prions and the medical sequelae. The bad guys were very stereotypical Russians, the homegrown terrorists were portrayed as losers for the most part, and the other characters are basically friends of Jack and Laurie that are more or less well known by readers of this series. I read this author because I love books written about medical conditions or diseases and epidemics, etc. Chemical and biological threats are serious possibilities that need to be monitored to safeguard citizens of all countries.
I was able to listen to the audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. The narrator, Will Damron, has done all the other books in this series. He has a great style that handles both the clinical jargon and the emotional range of the various characters. He also has the ability to keep in character with the various accents. His performance helps to overcome the slower parts of the book to keep readers engaged.
This is the 15th book in the series and installments should be read in order from the beginning.
Genre - tags medical thriller, Russian terrorists, prion bioweapon, domestic militia, right wing
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