Vector
Robin Cook

New York City cab driver Yuri Davydov is an angry, disillusioned Russian emigre bent on returning to his motherland after an unhappy seven years sojourn in the United States. Before his departure, he wants to lash out at the adoptive nation that lured him with what he believes was the hoax of the American Dream, only to deny his contentment, opportunity, and personal prosperity.
As a former technician for the vast Soviet biological weapons industry Biopreparat, Yuri possesses the technical knowledge to carry out his vengeance on a horrific scale, especially after teaming up with a pair of far right survivalists who share his abhorrence of the United States government. The survivalists and their neofascist skinhead militia have no trouble stealing the raw materials Yuri needs. Working together they launch Operation Wolverine.
Dr. Jack Stapleton and Dr. Laurie Montgomery are confronted with two seemingly disparate cases in their work as forensic pathologists in the city's medical examiner's office. Jack successfully diagnoses a rare case of anthrax, while Laurie examines the remains of a tortured skinhead. They hardly suspect that the cases could be related, but soon they begin to connect the dots, and the question then becomes whether or not they will solve the puzzle before Yuri and his comrades unleash the ultimate terror: a modern bioweapon.

The book is very good for many reasons. The first is it deals with characters (Jack and Laurie) from previous novels. The second is because the other characters are very well rounded, to the point of being sympathetic to Jack and Laurie's friends and to disliking the villains.

This book also shows how easy it would be for someone with the right knowledge to create a bioweapons lab in their basement and make enough of a chemical to take out a large portion of a metropolitan city.

The book is well written and while some of it is very similar to other works by Robin Cook, there is enough action and mystery here to keep a reader interested.

The ending is not predictable, and that's also something I liked. Usually in books like these you can guess the outcome of the novel, not so here. I liked that it was a genuine surprise.

In the end, I would definitely recommend this novel, especially to readers who have read other Robin Cook novels that involve the medical examiners Jack and Laurie.

My rating: Four out of five snails.