Spiral: A Novel

In this riveting debut thriller a finalist for Best First Novel at the 2012 Thriller Awards and a nominee for a Nero Award the race is on to stop the devastating proliferation of the ultimate bioweapon. "Spiral" is perfect for fans of Michael Crichton, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and Richard Preston.
When Nobel laureate Liam Connor is found dead at the bottom of one of Ithaca, New York s famous gorges, his research collaborator, Cornell professor of nanoscience Jake Sterling, refuses to believe it was suicide. Why would one of the world s most eminent biologists, a eighty-six-year old man in good health who survived some of the darkest days of the Second World War, have chosen to throw himself off a bridge? And who was the mysterious woman caught on camera at the scene? Soon it becomes clear that a cache of supersophisticated nanorobots each the size of a spider has disappeared from the dead man s laboratory.
Stunned by grief, Jake, Liam s granddaughter, Maggie, and Maggie s nine-year-old son, Dylan, try to put the pieces together. They uncover ingeniously coded messages Liam left behind pointing toward a devastating secret he gleaned off the shores of war-ravaged Japan and carried for more than sixty years.
What begins as a quest for answers soon leads to a horrifying series of revelations at the crossroads of biological warfare and nanoscience. At this dangerous intersection, a skilled and sadistic assassin, an infamous Japanese war criminal, and a ruthless U.S. government official are all players in a harrowing game of power, treachery, and intrigue a game whose winner will hold the world s fate literally in the palm of his hand."