Social issues, cool not-so-far-in-the-future gadgets, and a well-paced plot add up to a good read.
This sequel to The Genesis Code (2014) explores the high-stakes world of biotech.
Metzl's latest features the same cast and same scientific underbelly that appeared in The Genesis Code; it's set two years later, in 2025. Newspaper reporter Rich Azadian is enjoying the fruits of his success with a book that happens to be called Genesis Code when he's assigned an odd missing-person story by his editor at the Kansas City Star. As he follows the clues he realizes that a pattern is forming—two octogenarian scientists, both Jewish, both dying of cancer, have disappeared from hospice care and appeared on security video at the Tobago airport. But there's something strange about the videos: even though eye-scanning technology at the airport verifies the identities of the missing scientists, they look like men in their 40s clearing customs. Rich's investigation finds that a researcher named Noam Heller is the key; he's working on a project to reverse illness and aging, a fountain of youth to honor his late wife, who died of cancer. When Rich and his girlfriend, Toni, visit Heller’s lab—Rich brings Toni and her dog with him to charm the suspicious doctor into talking to him—they hear the “eternal sonata” that plays as Heller works, a composite of all Bach's sonatas that's programmed to keep playing forever. Big pharma and greed are the ghosts in the music; soon Heller's found dead, and for some reason Toni becomes a target for the bad guys. The story goes global as Rich visits Cuba and then a floating research facility near Santo Domingo, looking for answers about the missing scientists. Metzl has created a wonderful symbol in Scientists Beyond Nations, a research group based on an almost invisible ship, which protects medical ethics by excluding national interests from their research so their discoveries can benefit everyone.
Social issues, cool not-so-far-in-the-future gadgets, and a well-paced plot add up to a good read.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62872-679-4
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2016
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
