by Ben Mezrich
Beach Book of the Week
A MAD VISIONARY. A TORTURED HERO. A scientific breakthrough with awesome implications. This first novel by 27-year-old Ben Mezrich has the very elements that made Michael Crichton the T. Rex of science-thriller writers. And like Crichton, Mezrich knows how to weave them into a fast-paced story that's fun and irresistible.
The novel revolves around 24-year-old Jeremy Ross, a fourth-year medical student who has been asked by an old girlfriend to look into the mysterious death of her father, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense.
The investigation leads Ross from New York City to the massive, high-tech labs of the Tucsome (S.C.) Project for Genetic Research—and into a world of murder, government coverups and a plot to manipulate human DNA.
Mezrich's dialogue leans heavily on cliches, and his hero sometimes seems cartoonishly brilliant (Ross knows medicine, genetics and electrical engineering?), but the author knows his science—and he knows . how to make it exciting. With a movie deal for Threshold already in the works, Mezrich may give his idol Crichton a run for the royalties. (HarperCollins, $24)
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