THE MUD ROOM

In Cook’s debut thriller, a government subcontractor follows cryptic messages to thwart the destruction of the civilized world.

Chase Memphis works for various agencies to help prevent crises, using an “unnatural intuition” to pinpoint danger. In Tanzania, he directs United States soldiers on a search-and-rescue mission that ends with a shocking, unexplained explosion that kills nearly 30 soldiers. He returns to his Washington, D.C., office—the Mud Room, so called for its beige walls, old brown carpet, and the messy cases that are assigned there. Desperate to discover the truth behind the disaster in Tanzania, he embarks on a journey to gather and study various pieces of artwork and an ancient document written by the Greek scientist Archimedes, convinced that these items contain clues to the mystery and warnings of evils that could tear humanity apart. For this international excursion, he teams up with Ellis Newton, an old friend, and Mercy Peabody, a new romantic interest. Chase comes to cautiously trust Faan, a strange, sometimes helpful man who pops up wherever Chase goes while insisting that it’s Chase who’s following him. The author fills this story with abstruse details: Chase can’t explain his premonitions, and it’s not clear what Archimedes and the others were trying to say through their work. Nevertheless, Chase fights to save the world from…some form of peril. And while that peril is mostly vague, a tangible, powerful villain is hot on Chase’s trail. This evildoer is one of the novel’s several indelible characters, as are Faan, who’s charming but too mysterious to be wholly reliable, and Helen, the Mud Room receptionist who functions as a surrogate mother to the orphaned Chase. Cook’s narrative takes readers around the world, including stops in London and Greece, and aptly depicts the sights: white buildings on Mykonos Island seen from above are described as “tiles lined up in haphazard rows.” The ending, like the rest of the book, is ambiguous and open to interpretation.

A delightfully bizarre and enthralling tale of good versus evil.