THE GUARDIAN

The bad guy sneers and the good lady perseveres in this overcooked potboiler with a southwestern flavor from former corporate flack Bowen. Mr. Bad, a.k.a. Miles Standard, is a power company CEO with disdain for all and a massive problem: the susceptibility to flooding of the remote Nevada mountain cavern that he’s secretly invested company millions in as a repository for nuclear waste. Unfortunately, he’s already shipped such waste there on the sly and has covered up a fatal train accident on one of the shipments. So Standard seals up the cavern and leaves the mess, a development less than satisfying to security head Bill Summers, who grits his teeth and bears it. Dr. Good, a.k.a. Samantha Roberts, a physician with a big heart, has meanwhile established herself in a new practice in Reno, but she’s drawn to an Indian reservation near the mountain by reports of a couple of seriously sick kids. Picking up the slack when the local doctor commits suicide, she gets tipped off about the mountain by the project’s original geologist—just before the guy is knifed by an associate of Standard. So the battle is joined, and good meets bad inside the mountain (well, a few corpses are left outside) when Standard’s associate runs amok with his AK-47.

The story moves, but the pages don’t turn fast enough to keep the reader from seeing through the thin veneer of stereotype.