Cuando el detective James North es requerido con urgencia en una situación con rehenes en el museo de Arte Metropolitano de Nueva York, se ve sorprendido por dos hechos inusuales. En primer lugar, el secuestrador esgrime una espada de la edad de bronce como un experto guerrero, manteniendo en jaque a la policía. En segundo lugar, aunque nunca se han visto, Gene pregunta por él. Lo único que saben ambos hombres es que cada uno siente una necesidad instintiva de matar al otro.Así empieza la búsqueda de North, desde la Nueva York del siglo XX a la guerra de Troya, para descubrir un secreto que puede destruir a ambos hombres.Stel Pavlou es el autor de la obra de suspense El códice de la Atlántida, ambientada en un futuro cercano, y ha escrito el guión de la exitosa película Negocios sucios. Las siete pruebas es su segundo superventas internacional.

Amazing. Why do I have to give this only 5 stars? Why not 50? From what I know of the author, this just shows the range of his talents. Within this book is a good mix of history, myth, current times, science, literary fiction and horror. I pretty much agree with Al in that if I were a mainstream author, I wouldn't know where to put it, either. But who cares? It's certainly a good cerebral read.

In any event, there will be a full blown review shortly. You'll find it where I usually publish those things: accidentallymars.wordpress.com. Good job, Stel. Good job. (By the way, I totally geeked over your mention of Cold Harbor Springs Laboratory. I thought I was the only one who gave them full study on a fairly regular basis.) ( )

Stel Pavlou's first novel, Decipher, is one of my favorite books, mixing ancient mysteries with physics and alternate histories. When I'd heard he'd written Gene, his second novel, I was eager to read it. This book wasn't as much of a page-turner for me though. In fact, I had to force myself to get through it. The themes here are genetics, mythology, past lives and destiny, all interesting, but none of which I find as interesting as the themes in his first book, so I'm not sure if it was the writing or just my personal preferences that made this book drag for me. There were way too many threads to this story, which made it really hard to get into and follow. If an author can pull multiple threads together in such a way that there's a big moment of revelation or things weave together in an unexpected way, that's a payoff that makes following a complicated storyline worthwhile. Unfortunately, none of the many threads in this story ever came together in a way that felt worth the effort. There were a lot of interesting elements in this story, but much of the writing felt rather contrived. I really loved Decipher, and Gene was disappointing in comparison. ( )

An interesting take on man's search for immortality... ( )

I loved the description of this book, and so I bought it. It mixes ancient history (Mycenaean and Trojans) with the modern day. It also brings in re-incarnation, genetic engineering, and cloning. This was all presented through a strange crime at the Met in NYC, and the resulting police investigation.

Unfortunately there were too many things going on, and so none of them were really given any depth, or much explanation. The book lacked focus and tried to do too much in braiding ancient history, modern science, and a police procedural.

The story is very heavily laced with Deus Machina: All the stage-managing of real life is done by an evil baddie who uses his wealth and power to set up a corporation that takes care of everything from killing, to biological research, to acting as family services to those it uses but doesn't destroy.

The two biggest problems however was the writing which was awkward: "He necked two fingers" (explaining the cop downing whiskey). Throughout the book his phrases bring you to a halt and pops you out of the story when you are reading. And the poor ending: the story pits 2 characters against each other, then adds a 3rd. It ends with the easy death of one, off stage, and the stand-off of the other two: gun to syringe. Nothing is resolved and lots of threads are left hanging. ( )