Carroll Monks

Outside San Francisco, a sting of NGI's--violent sociopaths found not guilty by reason of insanity--have been sent back into society, and, one by one, mysteriously disappeared.... Beautiful psychologist Alison Chapley wants to know why and sets off on a search for answers that lures her and her former lover, medical examiner Carroll Monks, into a menacing and increasingly macabre dance with a brilliant psychopath known only as Naia.... Naia's perverse and carefully chosen clues--plaster masks, a snuff videotape, a deadly cobra--draw Alison into a psychological seduction she's powerless to resist. Running out of time, Monks's only chance to save Alison is to outwit this twisted mastermind in a deranged and deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

From the very start, Dr. Carroll Monks knew that the businessman dumped from a limousine in the parking lot of Mercy Hospital wasn't a typical San Francisco junkie. Even after Monks had rushed the dying man inside and brought him back from the precipice of a heroin overdose-after the danger had, seemingly, passed-Monks sensed that something more sinister was brewing. Just how sinister, he couldn't have guessed. First a phalanx of lawyers and doctors descended on the hospital and whisked the man away before Monks could find out more about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his arrival. Then a small fire broke out in the hospital-an act of sabotage that resulted in the disappearance of the man's blood samples. But the real shock came the next morning, when the newspapers reported the mysterious disappearance of billionaire Lex Rittenour. Rittenour, a beloved computer wunderkind, had long been rumored to be developing a top-secret technology involving the human genome, the medical applications of which had the potential to place his name alongside those of Lister, Curie, and Salk. Now, just days before the unveiling of his breakthrough, Rittenour-whom Monks now recognizes as the man he saved in the ER the night before-had, according to his corporate spokesmen, "gone into seclusion." What begins for Monks as an inquiry into Rittenour's disappearance unearths something far more diabolical-the horrific facts behind genetic research done in Rittenour's name-and pits him against a corporation of dubious ethics, ruthless commando-style tactics, and a multi-billion-dollar motivation to protect its dark secrets. As he did in his first Carroll Monks novel (Twice Dying), Neil McMahon creates from today's most complex ethical issues-in this case, the "progress" stemming from explosive new advances in genetics-the unforgettably chilling, electrifying drama of Blood Double.