FRAMESHIFT

Another near-future science-fictional thriller from Ontario resident Sawyer (the 1995 Nebula Award-winning author of The Terminal Experiment, not reviewed). French-Canadian molecular biologist Pierre Tardivel does research for the Human Genome Project in California--and has a 50-50 chance of dying of the incurable genetic Huntington's disease. His girlfriend, psychologist Molly Bond, is a short-range telepath; so when Pierre narrowly escapes being murdered, Molly knows the knife-wielder had in fact been paid to kill Pierre. But why? Well, Pierre discovers that other clients of Condor, his health insurance company, are being eliminated--clients with potentially expensive health problems. Molly, meanwhile, unable to conceive normally, agrees to an IVF procedure conducted free of charge by Pierre's boss, the Nobel laureate Burian Klimus--but he impregnates her with genes extracted from a Neanderthal's bones! Worse still, after a visit from Avl Meyer of the Justice Department, Pierre wonders whether Klimus might be the infamous Ivan the Terrible, of the Treblinka extermination camp! Conspicuously overplotted and unwieldy--the whole Ivan the Terrible subplot would have been better eliminated--but exciting and engrossing, if increasingly improbable.