Deutermann is a genius at creating heroes, villains, and everything in between. Many characters in this book behave badly, but Wendell Carson, manager of the Atlanta-area Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO), emerges as the truly despicable bad guy. Carson, who learned about skimming and scamming during his stint in the army, has retired and become a civil servant, using his army "education" to help him get ahead. Now the DRMO manager wants to cheat his "spotter," Bud Lambry, out of half the profit Carson hopes to make on their biggest deal.

Bud works in a warehouse, running the machine nicknamed "the Monster" which cuts up, decomposes and generally disposes of surplus items the military cannot reuse or sell at auction. For more than eight years he has spotted items coming into the warehouse which Carson illegally markets. Now Bud has stumbled upon a chemical weapon. Carson knows the weapon is potent, probably frightening, but needs the sale to liberate him from his ho-hum life.

During a routine audit at an Alabama weapons depot, a canister of "Wet Eye" seems to be missing. The Army's Chemical Corps is on the defensive, undermined by agreements restricting the government's ability to develop or threaten to use chemical weapons. Only two men know Wet Eye's potential, the head of the corps and his close friend, a military biologist. The biologist-friend is brought in to head a group tasked to discreetly recover the missing canister of Wet Eye while denying anything is amiss.

The conflicts that arise from efforts to recover the canister of Wet Eye while at the same time trying to cover up its disappearance provide Deutermann opportunities to explore the behavior of military yes-men and bureaucrats' running amok, and to examine the relationship between the military and federal law enforcement groups.

To offset these less than admirable characters, Deutermann creates a true hero, David Stafford. A navy-educated ex-cop, working for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, he is a whistleblower experiencing the unpleasant consequences of having exposed fraud in high places. Sent into the cold from his home-base in D.C., Stafford is assigned to investigate possible fraud in the auction of government surplus at the regional DRMO in Atlanta. Intending to avoid stepping on toes and to straighten out a life in personal and professional disarray, Stafford begins by working with Carson but quickly realizes the manager may be at the heart of his investigation.

Secondary characters add depth and complexity to the questions with which Dave Stafford struggles. Gwen Warren, a woman to whom Stafford is attracted, runs a small group home akin to an orphanage and her teenage ward draw him out into rural areas of Georgia. The second in command at the Army Chemical Corps, Brigadier General Lee Carrothers, is a mixture of the good and bad in any military organization, very ambitious but highly principled.

A minor flaw in this book was the numerous typos – missing words, letters, etc.– annoying when considering the hefty price tag for a hardback book. Aside from that, I enjoyed being educated about this sensitive political topic. Through Zero Option, Deutermann will convince some readers that the United States should develop, maintain and stand ready to use chemical weapons defensively. But regardless of whether one accepts or rejects that proposition, the book is suspenseful and entertaining.

--Sue Klock