Crime Zero: A Novel - Hardcover

Cordy, Michael

3.73

370 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 068815509X ISBN 13: 9780688155094

Publisher: William Morrow, 1999

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What would happen to society and to the balance of power in the battle between the sexes if the genes that code for violent behavior in men could be isolated and then modified? Crime Zero is a novel that is sure to alarm readers with the sort of frightening plausibility that sent The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood onto the bestseller lists.

It is the year 2008 and crime has become epidemic around the globe, nowhere more so than in the United States, where a group of scientists has taken matters into their own hands to offer what they see as a cure. Under the guise of Project Conscience, a rehabilitation scheme for offenders to modify their genes, a more sinister agenda is at work, one that will change the statistics finally and irrevocably.

For Luke Decker, FBI forensic psychologist, the move toward a genetic solution is fraught with danger. Unaware of the secret plan, he resolves to counter any developments with his own conclusions. But he is also unaware of a secret that is much closer to home and that constitutes a far greater risk to his safety and sanity than anything the geneticists can come up with. Unwittingly, he too will become a casualty when Crime Zero reaches its logical conclusion.

Provocative, plausible, prophetic, and deeply disturbing, Crime Zero is an incendiary bomb of a novel sure to incite controversy.

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About the Author:

Michael Cordy, a former marketing executive in Great Britain, left the rat race to pursue his dream of novel writing. He is the author of the international bestseller, The Miracle Strain, and lives outside London with his wife, jenny.

From Publishers Weekly:

In his second novel, Cordy revisits the genetics motif of his notable debut, The Miracle Strain, this time envisioning a chilling near future when a steely female FBI director and her sycophant virologist plot to alter human biogenetics and create a crime-free, female Utopia. In the year 2008, forensic psychologist Luke Decker, director of the behavioral sciences division of the FBI academy at Quantico, is at odds with his boss, FBI director Madeline Naylor, who believes criminals are genetically predetermined, not shaped by social conditioning. Decker is surprised to discover that his former lover, the brilliant geneticist Dr. Kathy Kerr, is now working for a California biotech lab. In collaboration with Naylor and her worshipful accomplice, Dr. Alice Prince, Kerr is conducting super-secret research to alter the genomes of males in hopes of curtailing their inborn violent tendencies. When Kerr is told that her theories have been implemented already, in a covert study in which prisoners were subjected to a lethal early strain of her genetic magic bullet, she realizes she's being used. Although the furtive trial caused many prisoners' deaths, it has also drastically reduced violent crime in L.A. for close to a decade. Asked to endorse the illegal study to swing the upcoming election in favor of the first female presidential candidate, Kerr refuses to join in the coverup and is marked for death. Meanwhile, Decker visits San Quentin, where a condemned serial killer gives him some very bad news. Kerr, now romantically reunited with Decker, confirms this frightening fact with DNA testing, and suspense heightens with the worldwide dissemination of a doomsday virus. Showing more twists than a spiraling double-helix of human DNA, the plot has rough edges and loose ends, but these are minor inconsistencies in Cordy's futuristic and timely gender-bender. Agent, David Chalfont. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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