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GENE
by Stel Pavlou
Simon and Schuster, January 2005
448 pages
12.99GBP
ISBN: 0743208595


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

New York Police Department Detective James North is called to a hostage situation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he comes across a man brandishing a bloodied ancient sword while a child cringes in a corner.

Ordered not to shoot, lest he harms an exhibit, North follows the madman's path of death and destruction through the museum, whereupon the killer gets on a police horse and is lost in the Midtown traffic. But before he escapes completely, the crazy man plunges a hypodermic into North's thigh, thus starting the detective on a journey into his own past ­- a past that has lasted 3000 years.

As North searches for the killer, a man we find out is called Gene, the history of the long relationship between the two men is revealed by flashback chapters. We also follow a mad genus who is controlling an experiment of gene manipulation and reincarnation memories.

From the first page of this novel, author Stel Pavlou, proves that he's never met an adjective or adverb that he doesn't love and will use in every sentence. Without the abundance of descriptions, this 448 page book would have been cut by a third, and that edit would have been welcomed by any reader trying to wade their way through the pages trying to follow the storyline.

Filled with pseudo-science, bits of information about genetic engineering, encompassing three thousand years of history and worldwide locations, GENE reads like a comic book. It's filled with over-the-top gruesome violence and high adolescent-taste sexual scenes, along with a rich evil genius with leagues of henchmen all willing to follow his every command. Though many characters in this book have been reincarnated, no one seems to have learned much, or even to think that dealing vengeance to a 3000-year-old wrong is pretty much a waste of time.

I didn't enjoy this book from its first break with logic, one that stated there were no New York Police Department units available to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art even after a cop was killed. Pavlou stretched the story's credulity way beyond the breaking point from the first page on. It was rife with faulty logic and gratuitous sex and violence wrapped in a comic book, male adolescent view of the world. I regret forcing myself to read GENE. The time I spent on it would have been better used on almost any other book.

Reviewed by Sharon Katz, March 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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