After the Fall

Starred review from November 24, 2014
Dr. Laura Nelson, chief of surgery at Tampa City Hospital (Fla.), reluctantly seeks a new career after suffering a serious hand injury in Gussin’s superior fourth and final series thriller (after 2012’s Weapons of Choice), set a year after the Gulf War. Laura agrees to become an executive at Keystone Pharma, a company about to release a wonderful new drug, Immunone, for which she helped organize the clinical trials. Meanwhile, FDA project manager Jake Harter is desperate to keep Immunone from being approved, for his own nefarious reasons. Jake is also willing to hide vital data and commit murder to keep his lover, Iraqi researcher Adawia Abdul, from leaving the U.S. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein’s minions are pressuring Adawia to return home so that she can create bioweapons. Gussin deftly resolves the various plotlines at the climax. Along the way, she vividly depicts her characters’ interior lives, especially Jake’s slide into monomania as he collides with the determined, clear-headed Laura.