Spiral

Spiral

Paul McEuen

Genre: Thriller

Summary (from Goodreads): In this riveting debut thriller— the winner of 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.
 
Review: This was a seriously creepy thriller if you are paranoid about biological warfare and terrible diseases like I am.  Other than the disturbing torture scenes, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and couldn't put it down.  The characters had a depth that can be unusual in a thriller, and the science at least seemed like it could be believable.  Some things were a little predictable, but overall it was an exciting read.

Rating: 4 stars