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N. E. Miller

The discovery of the Achilles gene by Ahmad Sharif at the Middle East Centre for Cancer and AIDS Research (MECCAR), recently opened in Jordan's remote Wadi Rum desert, had stunned Western scientists. Each gene having the potential to destroy its own cell should it ever become cancerous, the discovery had promised a universal cure for the disease. But there was a hitch. Although every one of our cells has the gene, only those of a unique Bedouin tribe have the extra piece of DNA needed to turn it on. Dr Stephen Salomon of the US National Cancer Institute claims to have invented such a switch, for which he will soon receive the Nobel Prize. But maverick Oxford don Giles Butterfield suspects his American friend's invention might be fraudulent. After a sleepless night in his office in Magdalen College, he sets off for Heathrow in search of the truth. When his young assistant Fiona Cameron unexpectedly joins him in Washington, it is the start of a globetrotting adventure the outcome of which exceeds their wildest expectations, presenting Giles with a dilemma of epic proportions.
Best Medical Thriller of 2021
BestThrillers.com

Clink Street Publishing

The Waynflete Trilogy

The Achilles Gene

After returning to a hero's welcome in Magdalen College, the drama of Stockholm behind him, Giles is tormented by doubts. Was Ahmad Sharif's death in Sorrento really an accident, as the Carabinieri concluded, or was the truth more sinister? Were the two girls with Stephen Salomon at the symposium his latest research fellows, as he claimed, or there for a very different purpose? And what of Fiona's long-held suspicions about their young assistant Aram? Given what she'd just found in her laptop, wasn't it time to start taking them seriously? When MECCAR's director Rashid Yamani unexpectedly invites Giles to Paris to suggest the true source of the DNA switch for Achilles, Giles sets off to Munich in pursuit of the evidence. But Fiona is not convinced. Left to herself, she hatches an ingenious alternative. Though at first reluctant to accept its plausibility, Giles is persuaded by what he finds after hurriedly returning to Sorrento. When Fiona's laboratory work provides another piece of the jigsaw, and Giles translates the content of an old discarded fax in Arabic that she had found in Washington, everything falls into place. But before they can make the next move, Giles must resolve an awesome ethical dilemma.

Deidamia's Surprise

When a mysterious mosquito-borne virus wipes out a community of indigenous Hawaiians on the tiny Pacific island of Ni'ihau, it has all the hallmarks of a field test of a state-sponsored biological weapon on unwitting human guinea-pigs. Eager to make his mark, the director of MECCAR's new sister centre in Indonesia solicits Giles's help to identify the perpetrators. Fiona's laboratory skills show it to be a Mexican strain of the West Nile virus, a common and usually innocuous species, engineered to carry a permanently active form of the Achilles gene. Having spotted Stephen Salomon at a virology congress in Mexico City when en route to Jakarta, she and Giles waste no time retracing their steps. Molecular analysis of a blood stain from a swatted mosquito in a ship's cabin, a day trip to the Maya ruins of Palenque, and an encounter with a deserted Mercedes Benz sow the seeds for a 3000 km road journey through rainforest, mountains, and desert in pursuit of the suspects. At the end of their journey, as they follow the flight path of a private jet from Tijuana on Fiona's smartphone, they know they must act swiftly and boldly if they are to avert a humanitarian disaster.