Krishna
This is not the first book by this author but references to previous work are discussed later in this review.
Vasco Borden, an investigator, is following Eddie Tolman into a biotech conference discreetly. He suspects Eddie is trying to transfer embryos for a fortune illegally to one of the entrepreneurs in the conference.
The conference is dominated by the rich Jack Watson who humiliates his budding partner Rick Diehl habitually. Rick, who had taken money from him to support his company, knows that given half a chance, Watson can take over his company and ruin him.
Meanwhile, Eddie sees Watson approaching Eddie and his beautiful tall girl companion stumbles. When Vasco wonders what this is about, Eddie turns and makes an exit. He is followed to a bar and when found out he heads to a nearby elevator with a cryogenic flask hidden inside another vessel and kills himself on the elevator by the simple expedient of opening the flask of nitrogen in the lift’s confined space.
Now the embryos were not in the flask, though Vasco is sure that this trade is all about biotechnology illegal swap for money.
Dr Gross had taken body cells from a patient, Mr Burnette and had sold it to bio labs causing Burnette to sue him.
Meanwhile Diehl meets a sleazy lawyer asking that as a part of the divorce settlement, his wife be tested for hundreds of genetic dispositions (Alzheimers and others). The lawyer is delighted at the prospect of a long profitable trial.
Meanwhile, in the jungles of Sumatra, the guide Hagar takes a bunch of tourists close to some Orang Utangs and the tourists (some of whom know the language) are flabbergasted when some of the monkeys seem to insult them in recognizable Dutch and French!
It creates world headlines. Charlie Huggins is called by Henry Kendall of Radial Genomics Inc, who wonders if this is the illegal work of Uttenbrock, a rival. Charlie pooh poohs the idea as a newspaper exaggeration but Henry has his sneaking suspicions.
Chris works in the lab of Diehl. His deadbeat brother Adam inhales a drug being given to rats which Chris had to keep in the backseat and Chris, initially very concerned, figures it is OK because the genetic medicine was intended for rats and Adam is a hundred times the weight.
Alex Burnette learns that the judge has deemed the sale of his tissues – without his permission – legal under eminent domain rule. A young man meets him and offers a lot of money for a documented donation of his cells and claims that the government facility that collected it illegally may not be able to use it because something may happen to the samples.
Tom Weller and Joe Winkler are dispensing gene-laced virus to caged rats when Tom’s phone rings. It is his mom Emily Weller who says that their father died in a car accident and that his body was in the morgue. Tom goes to his sister Lisa who is estranged. Tom tells her the news but her mom had called. Lisa calls the morgue, gets DNA and has a test done which proves that he was not her real father, as she suspected all along. She refuses to come to the funeral or even have anything to do with her ‘dad’ who died.
Kevin McCormick of Long Beach Memorial is worried. Tom Weller’s mother is suing the Memorial for the unauthorized release of tissue to the daughter. He calls the chief pathologist Dr Marty Roberts. They plot to ‘misplace’ the evidence so that it cannot be supplied and therefore the lawsuit cannot have evidence.
Karen Diehl, a rich but loquacious woman, comes to meet two attorneys, Barry Sindler who is ruthless and his partner Bob Wilson, a gentleman, not so ruthless. She had an affair but is seeking a divorce with no contest. When Barry suggests a paternity test (she has two children) she screams ‘Absolutely not!’ and storms out. Bob is at a loss to understand what good a paternity test will do but Barry does not oblige him with an answer.
Meanwhile, the gas inhaled by Adam, the brother of Chris, seems to have ‘cured’ him. He does Enot drink excessively does not gamble recklessly. Chris senses an opportunity to market it and become filthy rich.
Brad Gordon worked for Rick Diehl but was incompetent but Rick could not fire him because he was related to Jack Watson, his principle investor.
Rick has other issues. His rich wife seems to be drifting away from him and without her money, his lab is sunk. So he tries to get other investors to invest in his company but due to the slightly experimental nature of the drug, they do not seem to be very interested.
Emily Weller is furious that Lisa was given DNA to compare hers with and is planning to sue the Funeral Services. When the lawsuit requires the body to be exhumed and several tissue samples to be extracted, she seems to be anxious. So Marty wonders why. He also notices that some bones have been ‘removed’ from the corpse and suspects his man Raza to be using them illegally with other clients. Raza denies it and says his brother – who does not even work in the funeral services – did the burial for him. Marty is so enraged that he is rendered speechless.
Brad Gordon likes to see underage girls and goes to the sports field to do that. He is “accidentally” sought out by a young girl (young enough to be his daughter) who hints that she likes ‘older guys’. And falls for it.
Rick meets one of the representatives of investing companies, Jacqueline Maurer, an attractive Norwegian blond. He is drawn to her and she promises to set his problems right.
Meanwhile, Marilee Hunter meets Marty and says that the results of his DNA test on Weller was faked. When they redid the tests they found traces of not just alcohol but other drugs in the blood that could have caused the scandal. She asks him to redo the tests and Marty remembers that it was again Raza who did the tests. Did he fake it too? And the blood samples have vanished.
Ellis Levine tries to convince his deluded mother that she is no longer rich as their dad lost his job and also his life savings. She seems oblivious.
Meanwhile, a genetically modified intelligent parrot, Gerard, tells Richard’s wife with his affairs with another woman in their own house. The husband apologieses but the wife, Gail, says that he is toast if it ever happens again and also if he harms Gerard, she will kill him.
She too is having an affair with a Japanese businessman – temporarily.
Meanwhile, Henry is called to his lab urgently and is shown a monkey ‘Dave’ who can talk. The assistant says that he needs to destroy Dave painlessly as the whole experiment is illegal but Henry, knowing that some of his genes have gone into Dave, decides that Dave is his surrogate son and rescues him. Lynn is astounded and upset that Dave has come ‘to live with them’.
They fool the world that Dave is human, and suffers from a rare disease that makes some kids look like monkeys. And so a new ‘son’ is born to Henry.
When they discover that the rats are ageing prematurely and dying quickly, Josh discovers that Adam has also been ageing rapidly.
The parrot, in the meanwhile has escaped and the wife suspects her husband, who was annoyed that it blurted out his affair. The husband is, of course, lying. He has sold it to a rich friend of his who is flying out of the country.
Meanwhile, a trophy hunter called Gorevich engages Hagar for a trip after the sensational headlines about talking monkeys has died down – because no one ever saw another one again – and bags himself an Orang Utan through a tranquilizer. All of this illegal, of course.
Meanwhile, the company finds that one of the employees has contaminated the samples taken and believing that it now has the rights to the ‘material’ tries to take Alex or son Jamie kidnapped to take what is theirs. But Dave foils the plan and the hired hitman, losing an ear, gives up and runs away. Exhilarating action scenes there.
Finally when he tries to kidnap Jamie again, Dave’s shoes are in his car and the father of Alex’s friend had put in a tracking device. So Alex easily tracks him down and Dave does a number on the kidnapper who sees Alex with the machine gun and decides ‘enough is enough’. He aborts the mission and heads home.
Meanwhile, belatedly, the judge rules that the company does not have the right to the genes if the original donation is destroyed. (Duh!).
As always, the book takes scientific progress and imagines what would it be like if this was taken to its logical extent. Crichton is well known for it, as we have seen in our earlier reviews of his books – for example, Prey or The Lost World of the same author.
Is this book an interesting read? Yes, definitely. Is this the best of his books? I do not think so.
7/10