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The Experiment

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Overview

With the brilliant combination of cutting-edge science and nerve-jangling suspense that made his first novel, Neanderthal, a major bestseller, John Darnton returns with The Experiment.
On a remote island off the Southeastern coast, a young man named Skyler sees his friends vanish one by one. In a small New York town, a journalist observes a corpse with its fingerprints burned off. In New York City, an expert on twins stumbles upon a case that hits stunningly close to home for her.

Editorial Reviews

The author of Neanderthal returns with a second science-drenched thriller that's as au courant as you'd expect from a veteran New York Times man (Darnton is that paper's cultural news editor). The novel is timely because it concerns human cloning; unfortunately, its plot is every bit as contrived as that scientific sleight of hand. Initially, the narrative follows two young men separately: Skyler lives on an isolated island off Georgia, on an estate called the Lab, where he has been raised according to strict dictates (enforced by hulking Orderlies) along with other boys and girls. Occasionally, a kid is taken away for medical work, or turns up dead. Now Skyler finds his girlfriend, Julia, eviscerated in the Lab's operating room, and escapes the island. At the same time, Jude Harley, a Manhattan tabloid reporter, is assigned a piece on identical twins. His main interview subject and future bedmate is twin-researcher Tizzie Tierney. Down South, meanwhile, Skyler sees a photo of Jude, and tracks him down. Legwork and labwork point to Skyler being Jude's clone; Julia, it seems, was Tizzie's clone. But how, and why Jude, Skyler and Tizzie undertake a cross-country hunt for clues, all the while hunted in turn not only by the Orderlies but by a renegade FBI faction involved in the grand conspiracy behind all the fuss. Darnton is a prize-winning reporter (including a Pulitzer), and that expertise shows in his careful employment of scientific detail about twins and cloning. His novelist's skills are less honed. The story is driven not by character, but by plot, which has a strung-out feel, featuring one chase or killing or crisis after another. Darnton's prose is impeccable but flat, while the book's climax, involving a mad doctor, is howlingly melodramatic. This novel may reflect today's news, but Ira Levin wrote a much snappier cloning thriller, The Boys from Brazil, more than 20 years ago. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of John Darnton

John Darnton has worked for thirty-nine years as a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He was awarded two George Polk Awards for his coverage of Africa and Eastern Europe, and the Pulitzer Prize for his stories smuggled out of Poland during the period of martial law. He lives in New York. His first novel, the best seller Neanderthal, was praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for being "as informative as it is entertaining."

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Additional Info

Imprint

Penguin Group E-Books

Filesize

974.98 KB

Number of Pages

496

eBook ISBN

9780786567393

Excerpt from: The Experiment by John Darnton

Skyler and Julia crept to the basement door of the Big House and looked around to make sure they weren't being watched. A breeze stirred the humid air, rustling the Spanish moss that hung from the old oaks that arched over what used to be the approach road. It made a dry, whispering sound.

It was dusk, at least, which meant they would be hard to spot in the shadows of the old manor -- but not that hard if someone walked around back.

Skyler felt the fear as a tingling in his groin; from there it spread upward to his belly and reached his arms and legs.

This is crazy, he thought.

If they were caught -- he couldn't even imagine the punishment. Nothing like this had ever happened at the Lab.

They weren't sure what they were going to do. They had no plan, really, other than to break into the Records Room and search for clues to explain what had happened to Patrick. They had to do something, try to find something, or else the reason for his disappearance would never be known. It would remain forever mysterious, like those of the others on the island, who had been taken away and never returned.

That morning Patrick had appeared fine. He had eaten breakfast with the others in the Age Group and then gone off to calisthenics and chores. But by the early afternoon they had heard the rumors: he had been summoned for a physical -- not the routine weekly examination but a special physical. That was a signal that something was wrong, that perhaps a dreadful illness had been discovered, and sure enough, the Elder Physicians had convened a meeting before dinner to inform them that Patrick had been "called away." The phrase had been uttered ambivalently, as it always was: in sadness certainly, for the Physicians had loved him as they loved them all, but also with a hint of reverence -- as if he had made some sort of noble sacrifice.