The Pleistocene Redemption

Taking place over the next quarter century, this episodic SF novel seeks to combine thriller, religious tract and cloning a la Jurassic Park--with little success. Geneticist Kevin Harrigan and his friend and partner, Manfred Freund, are pulled into illegal genetic research by Ismail Mon, an Iraqi. Their initial research re-creates a good many Pleistocene animals, some benign, others (such as the ancestor of the Komodo dragon) not. The research goes on to re-create both Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon humans and to serve as a cover for lethal biological warfare intended to make Mon the ruler of the world. Gallagher's characterization is wooden, his dialogue something denser yet, his action scenes muddled by clumsy prose and technical flaws. The frequent preaching against Harrigan's ""rationalism"" ends up sounding like the old SF cliche: ""There are things man was not meant to know."" Crichton, much less Conan Doyle, this isn't. (Aug.)