Blood Double

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 medicalapplications 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 RittenMcMahon, Neil is the author of 'Blood Double' with ISBN 9780060197667 and ISBN 0060197668.