Mount Dragon » (Unabridged)

Douglas Preston is the co-author with Lincoln Child of a bestselling thriller/adventure series. He also writes novels and nonfiction books of his own and is a frequent contributor to magazines like National Geographic, The New Yorker, Natural History, Smithsonian, Harper's, and Travel & Leisure.

Guy Carson is a brilliant scientist at GeneDyne, one of the world's foremost biochemical companies. When he is transferred to Mount Dragon, GeneDyne's high-security genetic engineering lab, his good fortune seems too good to be true.

Carson soon finds that it is. He learns that GeneDyne geneticists are tinkering with a common virus with an eye on the enormous profit to be had from a cure for the flu. Their cure involves permanently altering DNA in humans, and Carson's job is to stabilize the virus. But Carson starts to wonder if this is justifiable, even for the most noble medical cause. Altering genes is a risky job, and the possibility of creating another killer virus is very real. What's more, Mount Dragon harbors another secret that puts the world at horrifying risk.

Library Journal

Preston and Child, who pooled their talents in last year's Relic (LJ 1/95), here provide a suspenseful romp combining genetic engineering, virtual reality, and scientific ethics. When Guy Carson is asked to join the elite group of scientists working at GeneDyne's mysterious Mount Dragon facility, he's overjoyed. There, he works on a grand scheme to alter humanity's DNA code in order to provide immunity to the flu. As expected in tales of this ilk, playing God has its risks, and things go horribly awry. Reader David Colacci employs a wonderful sense of pace in this exciting if sometimes preachy novel, which will do well in most popular collections.Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"