THE TANGLED WEB

Medical thriller from England about the scary things that can happen when you send in the clones.

The Palmers, John and Lucy, a loving couple, have come home from the fertility clinic with little Anne-Marie. She was born legless. No matter, they tell each other, she belongs to them, and they adore her. But when the child's savaged body is discovered buried in their garden, John immediately confesses to murder, becoming at once an object of scorn, a pariah in the small Welsh village of his birth. Only his stalwart family doctor, Tom Gordon, rallies round. Convinced of John’s innocence, Tom is prepared to risk his reputation, his career, even his very life to prove it. But why, if John is innocent, has he confessed? For the noblest of reasons, Tom explains. In his first grief-stricken moments—not thinking clearly—John decided that Lucy, having found the child's deformity too much to bear, must have killed little Anne-Marie. Thus, his confession was meant to shift blame from the woman he loved to himself. Since the police have made it clear, however, that they consider the case solved, the presumed guilty party is jailed, and Tom turns sleuth. He soon discovers that strange things are going on in Caernarfon General’s fertility clinic: it seems that human cloning has been dabbled in by staffers cavalier indeed about ethical behavior. And then suddenly another infant girl is in the headlines. Little Megan Griffiths is dead, and no one can find her corpse. Obviously Anne-Marie and Megan are connected somehow, argues Tom. Needless to say, he’s right. Needless to say, rural Felinbach hates him for as a result. Needless to say, he cracks his case, wins his girl, and earns the heartfelt gratitude of John and Lucy.

Plodding plotting, pedestrian prose: veteran British thriller writer McClure debuts inauspiciously here.