| Guy Carson hates his boss and the miserable life he is living in Edison, New Jersey working for mega-pharmaceutical corporation GeneDyne. His boss is a fat bully who enjoys tormenting his employee with time wasting menial assignments. By a stroke of luck Carson is hand picked by GeneDyne's 39 year-old founder Brent Scopes to fill a vacancy at the company's Mount Dragon, New Mexico research facility. It is a short-term assignment working with a killer strain of virus called X-FLU. He and the team of researchers are working to develop an engineered virus using Chimps that will allow humans to develop the same natural immunity when vaccinated. Carson learns that his predecessor Dr. Franklin Burt was a brilliant geneticist but lost his mind under the difficult conditions of the Fever Tank, a Level-5 biohazard test lab on the campus of the NM facility.
Carson gets off on the wrong foot with his assistant, Susana Cabeza de Vaca and is treated poorly by other scientists, technicians, and security staff at Mount Dragon. Still he is elated to work on something worthwhile and challenging. Meanwhile, Dr. Charles Levine of Harvard University uses his considerable clout to rail against Brent Scopes and his genetic engineering ventures at GeneDyne. It seems the two were colleagues back at UC Irvine in the early 70's before a difference in ethics caused an irreparable rift that continues to this day. Levine goes to considerable risk to establish an online link to Carson, a former student of his at Harvard. When a terrifying accident occurs two of the personnel are placed in quarantine for observation. One of the victims suffers a horrible death, similar to those experienced by the test apes. The facility is under OSHA scrutiny and may not be allowed to continue its work. Strange symptoms begin to afflict the staff and it turns out all is not right at Mount Dragon as Carson learns disturbing information when he locates the missing journal of Dr. Burt. | ||
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Plot & Themes Tone of story - suspenseful (sophisticated fear) Time/era of story: Medical Thriller Yes Medical Plotlets: Kid or adult book? - Adult or Young Adult Book descript. of violence and chases - 30 % Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 10 % Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 30 % How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 30 % Main Character Gender - Male Profession/status: Age: - 20's-30's Ethnicity/Race Main Adversary Identity: - Male Age: - 40's-50's Profession/status: Eccentric: Yes Motive of antagonist - money/treasure The antagonists are: - big business leader(s) How sensitive is this character? Intelligence - Genius Setting United States Yes The US: - West Desert? Yes Desert: - dying of thirst, sunburn City? Yes City: - Boston Misc setting - fort/military installation Writing Style Explicit sex in book? Yes What kind of sex: - descript of kissing - touching of anatomy - licking - actual description of sex - descript. of breasts A lot of techno jargon? Yes Kind of jargon? - biology/medical Unusual forms of death - biohazard/virus Unusual form of death? Yes Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog |
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