Ninth Day of Creation

In Crane's first novel, a biochemist must decode hexadecimal e-mail fragments, chase assassins and confront the president of the U. S. about his secret biological warfare program. Credulity issues aside, scientist-turned-author Crane spins a gripping tale with all the complexity of a Tom Clancy novel, but without the gift of smoothly weaving together the story's loose threads. Richard Kirby has just announced a dramatic breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS at the WHO conference in Geneva. The White House, eager to defuse a tense political situation, has taken credit for the anonymous funding of this research. Back in his San Diego office, Kirby begins to probe into the apparent suicide of a colleague, as well as clandestine activities in his own company. Enlisting the help of a local newspaper reporter and a CIA agent, Kirby finds himself tracking terrorists who have kidnapped both the president of Mexico and his own wife. Crane provides highly detailed descriptions of advances in biotechnology, clearly the subject he knows best. Yet the details of the larger story, involving military conflicts among multiple nations, are sometimes muddled, further hampered by poor editing. Despite these shortcomings, Crane presents an intriguing scenario of how today's biotechnology could be utilized as an agent of genocide. (June)