Moscow Metal: A Doc Adams Suspense Novel

Oral surgeon Charlie Adams is the kind of Yankee who tends to explain everything, making his new adventure a trifle longwinded, though still enjoyable. The fourth Doc Adams novel (Billingsgate Shoal, etc.) starts with the mysterious, painful death of an Adams cat. Then Doc's wife Mary is felled by a stranger fevercaused, it is discovered, by a deadly pellet of irradiated thallium she found in the cat's body. Mary recovers, but the FBI is called in because the poison (""Moscow metal'') is used mostly in KGB assassinations and because an Adams neighbor, a refugee Hungarian scientist, has vanished. Soon Doc is involved with more deaths, double agents and the impending theft of a high-tech defense system. After some meticulousand garruloussleuthing, Doc engages in a lethal, climactic struggle with a fabled Soviet agent. There are some hard-to-swallow plot developmentsDoc harbors an obvious villain far too longbut the story's cozy, middle-class Concord, Mass., ambience is well evoked. Fans of earlier books probably won't mind the unlikely and violent ending. (June 29)