Slatewiper FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Fact: Our chromosomes contain billions of so-called "junk DNA" sequences. Some of them are the intact genetic blueprints of ancient gene-altering pathogens." "Fact: Bioweapons designers are developing deadly, genetically engineered, killer life-forms that are triggered by race- and ethnic-related genes." "Fact: DNA analysis shows that the human race has come extremely close to extinction in the past. One cause of this could have been a "slatewiper" - a lethal pestilence that nearly wiped the human slate clean." "Fact: By the end of World War II, Japan's biowarfare arsenal was the most advanced in the world thanks to its inhumane medical experiments that equaled those of the Third Reich." "The time has come for...Slatewiper." "Lara Blackwood, genetic engineering entrepreneur and presidential advisor, received a call from an old college friend who asks her help in solving a ghastly epidemic in Tokyo. She agrees to help and, with a single phone call, sets in motion a chain of death and mayhem stretching from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, and Japan." To her horror, she discovers her life's work has been perverted to produce a revolutionary new genetic weapon that kills by turning people's own chromosomes against them.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Humanity's very existence is at stake in this latest hair-raiser by Perdue (Daughter of God), a no-holds-barred biogenetic thriller. Lara Blackwood, founder of GenIntron, a company devoted to gene manipulation as a method of fighting genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs and sickle-cell anemia, is a tough hybrid of brilliant scientist, beauty and fighter. As the novel begins, GenIntron has been forced into economic difficulty and bought by the internationally powerful Japanese Daiwa Ichiban Corporation and its racist head, Tokutaro Kurata. In his first move, Kurata perverts Blackwood's work by creating a new genetic weapon, graphically named Slatewiper, with which he intends to rid Tokyo of its hated Korean immigrants. Thousands of dead Koreans fill the streets, and puzzled doctors postulate a new and unknown disease. Kurata dreams of reviving Japanese militarism, refusing to acknowledge defeat in WWII and denying the horrifying Japanese atrocities of that war and earlier Asian wars. He plans to sell the deadly gene to nations wishing to eliminate their own minorities, or for use against enemies, while plotting to promote Japanese superiority and racial purity. Aiding Kurata is Blackwood's nemesis, Sheila Gaillard, as beautiful and brilliant as Blackwood and altogether deadly, and Kurata's nephew and heir, American-taught Akira Sugawara, loyal but finally driven to rebellion by the horrors he witnesses. Perdue never strays far from form-garish violence, one-dimensional characters, mechanical climax-but in the light of current medical epidemics, this is a timely offering. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Perdue (Daughter of God, 2000, etc.), a former investigative reporter who specialized in recovery of art missing in Europe, turns to bio-ethics and DNA analysis. Molecular geneticist Lara Blackwood, cofounder and CEO of GenIntron, a bioengineering lab, is an entrepreneur who develops new disease treatments with synthetic genes made from junk DNA in the human genome. When Tokyo is hit hard by a supermysterious, fast-acting "Korean disease" universally fatal to its victims, Lara, fired from GenIntron by its new parent company in Japan, Daiwan Ichiban, is taken on by the White House as presidential aide in genetic development. As it happens, not a single Japanese, only the detested Koreans in Tokyoﾽs Korean ghetto, die of the Korean Leprosy in the test run of an ethnic bioweapon that focuses the disease on people bearing Korean genes. The Slatewiper, whose synthetic gene reduces people to slime and then into a bloodburst, is the weapon by which Daiwan Ichibanﾽs top gun Tokutaru Kurata means to purify Japan of foreigners and boost fervent nationalism. The Saudis want GenIntron to formulate a bug that will kill all Jews in Israel, while actual production of the materials will be in Japan at Daiwan Ichiban. The president himself, apparently fearful of Tokutaru Kurata, warns Lara off from pursuing the source of the Korean Leprosy. But Lara has won two Olympic medals and begun a solo round-the-world sail, is tall for a woman, a martial-arts adept, and not to be dissuaded by a mere president. Clearly, the day must come when she goes man-to-man with Sheila Gaillard, the bad guysﾽ hugely vicious and skillful hit woman who murders one by one all of Laraﾽs scientific helpers as Lara works undercoverto unearth a bio-weapon for which she is partly responsible. And not even Sheila having her face splashed with frozen hydrogen can stop her. Rich research for science/action thrills.
Home
