Nano
Pia Grazdani, the heroine of Cook’s previous thriller, Death Benefit (2011), has relocated from New York to Colorado, where she’s taken a job at Nano, a cutting-edge nanotechnology company. Though Pia thinks she’s found a safe haven there, she begins to suspect that Nano might not be as transparent as the charismatic CEO, Zachary Berman, makes it out to be. While jogging on her lunch break, Pia stumbles across a Chinese man in cardiac arrest. She revives him and rushes him to the hospital only to have Zachary and Nano security guards spirit him right out of the ER. Wondering what the company could be hiding, Pia resolves to gain access to a secure building at Nano, even if it means having to get close to Zachary, whose infatuation with her borders on obsession. As in any Cook novel, the scientific details are fascinating, but here the characters are underdeveloped, and the constant objectification of Pia by almost every man who crosses her path wears thin. --Kristine Huntley