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1 of 1 copy available
“A fascinating ride through a world of bioweaponry, nanoscience, murder, and international intrigue . . . one of the best debut thrillers I’ve read in a long time.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston
ITW THRILLER AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL • NERO AWARD NOMINEE
When fungi specialist Nobel laureate Liam Connor is found dead at the bottom of one of Ithaca, New York’s famous gorges, his research collaborator, Cornell professor of nanoscience Jake Sterling, refuses to believe it was suicide. Why would one of the world’s most eminent biologists, a eighty-six-year old man in good health who survived some of the darkest days of the Second World War, have chosen to throw himself off a bridge? And who was the mysterious woman caught on camera at the scene? Soon it becomes clear that a cache of supersophisticated nanorobots—each the size of a spider—has disappeared from the dead man’s laboratory.
Stunned by grief, Jake, Liam’s granddaughter, Maggie, and Maggie’s nine-year-old son, Dylan, try to put the pieces together. They uncover ingeniously coded messages Liam left behind pointing toward a devastating secret he gleaned off the shores of war-ravaged Japan and carried for more than sixty years.
What begins as a quest for answers soon leads to a horrifying series of revelations at the crossroads of biological warfare and nanoscience. At this dangerous intersection, a skilled and sadistic assassin, an infamous Japanese war criminal, and a ruthless U.S. government official are all players in a harrowing game of power, treachery, and intrigue—a game whose winner will hold the world’s fate literally in the palm of his hand.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 22, 2011 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780307881274
- File size: 305899 KB
- Duration: 10:37:17
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Cornell physics professor Paul McEuen's debut is a gripping biotech thriller. After a sluggish start, the story, which features spider-like nano-robots, picks up its pace dramatically, building to a climax that is both satisfying and surprising. Rob Shapiro's narration parallels the novel's development, beginning slowly and then picking up steam as the story kicks into high gear. Shapiro's use of different voices is effective, particularly those of Orchid, a female assassin, and Hitoshi Kitano, who viewed Japan's surrender in WWII as a humiliation and is determined to exact revenge on America. Shapiro excels, in particular, with his depiction of Cornell researcher Jake Sterling, whose determination permeates his every syllable. D.J.S. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine -
January 10, 2011
Set in and around the city of Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell physics professor McEuen's fiction debut successfully mixes science and suspense. When Liam Connor—an 86-year-old Cornell emeritus professor of biology, a Nobel Prize winner, and pioneer in the field of nanoscience—inexplicably jumps to his death off a bridge into one of Ithaca's gorges, the entire community is stunned, especially Connor's granddaughter, Maggie, and his academic confidant, professor Jake Sterling. But when micro-robots—silicon and metal constructs that Connor helped create—are found in his stomach, Maggie and Jake realize that he didn't commit suicide: he was tortured before being murdered. As they race to unravel cryptic messages Connor left behind, his ruthless killer plots to unleash an ingenious biological "doomsday weapon" with origins all the way back to WWII Japan. While the cutting-edge science and apocalyptic backdrop power the narrative, it's the cast of endearing characters and their interpersonal relationships and struggles that make this emotionally intense and thought-provoking novel so readable.
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