The Third Twin - Softcover

Follett, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0517702967 ISBN 13: 9780517702963

Publisher: Crown, 1996

Synopsis

The study of twins and the genetics of aggression totally consumes research scientist Jeannie Ferrami. An accomplished and headstrong researcher, Jeannie has developed a sophisticated software program to identify identical twins reared apart. But Jeannie's breakthrough project is threatened by the appearance of a sudden impossibility--identical twins born weeks apart to different mothers at separate locations. When Jeannie's research assistant, Lisa, is raped, Steve Logan, a young law student who is one of Jeannie's research subjects, is identified in a police lineup as Lisa's attacker. Logan's genetic tests reveal no violent behavior patterns. Then Jeannie stumbles upon the beginnings of a stunning revelation. Logan is unaware of the existence of a criminal twin brother in jail. Jeannie is convinced of Steve's innocence, yet her judgment may be clouded by her growing emotional attachment to him. By now Jeannie's problems are mounting. Berrington Jones, Jeannie's arrogant and intimidating boss, is a world-renowned authority on biotechnical engineering. He and his partners are involved in devious but lucrative negotiations to sell Genetco, their biogenetic research company. Jeannie's research poses a major threat to their impending millions. Jones arranges to have Jeannie fired.

Stunned and feeling helpless, Jeannie doesn't understand why this has happened to her. With Steve and his brother in jail, who is committing these sex crimes? While acting on a hunch that might solve the mystery surrounding Steve and his brother's birth, Jeannie is violently attacked by yet another twin who looks exactly like Steve. Determined to protect her research program and convinced her former boss has something important to hide, a terrified Jeannie has no other choice but to find out why Jones and his partners will stop at nothing to discredit her work.

About this title

About the Author

Ken Follett put aside thrillers to pursue historical sagas. Pillars of the Earth, A Dangerous Fortune, and A Place Called Freedom were hugely successful international bestsellers. He also wrote the non-fiction bestseller, On Wings of Eagles, about the rescue of Ross Perot's EDS employees during the Iranian revolution. When not writing novels or raising money for Great Britain's Labor party, Follett plays bass guitar in his own rock'n'roll band. Follett and his wife, Barbara, divide their time among homes in London, Cannes, and Antigua.

Reviews

After three consecutive historical sagas (A Dangerous Fortune, etc.), Follett returns to the threshold of the 21st century with a provocative, well-paced and sensational biotech-thriller about the genetic manipulation of human embryos. Striving to prove that offspring genetically predisposed toward aggression can learn to sublimate their combative nature through childhood conditioning by socially responsible parents, a feisty and brilliant young university researcher, Jeannie Ferrami, develops software to identify identical twins who have been reared apart. When she stumbles across what seems to be an impossibility?identical twins born to different mothers at separate locations on different dates, Jeannie runs into serious trouble. Pitted against her is, foremost, her own faculty mentor, Berrington Jones, a world-renowned authority on biotechnical engineering. In devious partnership with another scientist and a bigoted U.S. senator with presidential aspirations, Jones is co-founder of Genetico, a small company that pioneered biogenetic research. The trio is now in the final stages of a lucrative friendly buyout by a corporate giant?and they don't take kindly to Jeannie's diggings. Multiples created by genetic manipulation aren't new to thrillers (e.g., Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil), but Follett puts a clever spin on the concept. And despite entwining outlandish plot strands of biotechnical skullduggery, a neo-Nazi candidate for president, academic politics and corporate greed with a steamy romance between Jeannie and one of the twins, the novel shines with the authenticity that's Follett's trademark as it explores the Internet and the mind-boggling data banks of personal statistics maintained by insurance empires, the Pentagon and the FBI. This isn't Follett's most sophisticated novel?it's heavy on the melodrama and on sexual violence?but its wicked narrative energy and catchy theme will likely propel it quickly onto the charts. Major ad/promo; simultaneous Random House audio and large-print editions; author satellite tour;
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

It's high concept all the way in Follett's latest breakneck-paced thriller: a scientist doing research on identical twins raised apart stumbles on a secret government project to breed the perfect soldier. The original plan fizzled in the Watergate era, but not before eight test-tube clones were born to unsuspecting women. When one of the clones walks into Jeannie Ferrami's university research project and another rapes Jeannie's best friend, an elaborately constructed house of cards begins to crumble. Soon Jeannie is fired, she falls in love with the nice clone (who is under indictment for the friend's rape), and she takes on an evil cabal of geneticists and right-wing politicians. This group, led by Jeannie's former boss, is determined to implement a breeding scheme designed to ensure that future Americans will be strong, blond, and pure. The coincidences multiply faster than mutant chromosomes, but if you stay focused on the next curve in the narrative road, you'll be too caught up in the action to worry about plausibility. Follett is as good as Grisham at keeping a totally plot-driven thriller zooming along on the thinnest of surfaces, like a car hydroplaning on a slick highway, and he's at his Grand Prix best here. Fans will love the ride, and movie producers will swoon at the high concept. Expect Julia Roberts as Jeannie and Brad Pitt as the eight clones (assuming he's through impersonating General Custer). Bill Ott

Cloning and multiplying have seized the collective creative imagination, and lately there seems to be a double behind every lamp-post. Follett, whose Key to Rebecca (1980) ranks among the best thrillers ever, now weighs in with a saga that resounds with contemporary themes, tremendous characters, and a plot that puts high energy back into the doppelganger tradition. With a multiplier effect that registers booming numbers on the Richter scale of thrillers, Follett creates a young scientist who starts out to prove a point in the hoary debate of nurture vs. nature. As her computer program shuffles through huge databases tracking down twins raised apart, she stumbles on a secret cloning experiment that has let loose eight "twins," three of whom become intimate subjects in her study. The patina of glamorous biotech science is vigorously burnished by the oils of lust for sex and power. This is a surefire multiple-copy purchase for most libraries.?Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A heat wave lay over Baltimore like a shroud. The leafy suburbs were cooled by a hundred thousand lawn sprinklers, but the affluent inhabitants stayed inside with the air-conditioning on full blast. On North Avenue, listless hookers hugged the shade and sweated under their hairpieces, and the kids on the street corners dealt dope out of the pockets of baggy shorts. It was late September, but fall seemed a long way off.

A rusty white Datsun, the broken lens of one headlight fixed in place with an X of electrician's tape, cruised through a white working-class neighborhood north of downtown. The car had no air-conditioning, and the driver had rolled down all the windows. He was a handsome man of twenty-two wearing cutoff jeans, a clean white T-shirt and a red baseball cap with the word Security in white letters on the front. The plastic upholstery beneath his thighs was slippery with his perspiration, but he did not let it bother him. He was in a cheerful mood. The car radio was tuned to 92Q "Twenty jams in a row!" On the passenger seat was an open binder. He glanced at it occasionally, memorizing a typed page of technical terms for a test tomorrow. Learning was easy for him, and he would know the material after a few minutes of study.

At a stop light, a blonde woman in a convertible Porsche pulled alongside him. He grinned at her and said: "Nice car!" She looked away without speaking, but he thought he saw the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Behind her big sunglasses she was probably twice his age: most women in Porsches were. "Race you to the next stop light," he said. She laughed at that, a flirtatious musical laugh, then she put the stick shift into first with a narrow, elegant hand and tore away from the light like a rocket.

He shrugged. He was only practicing.

He drove by the wooded campus of Jones Falls University, an Ivy League college much swankier than the one he attended. As he passed the imposing gateway, a group of eight or ten women jogged by in running clothes: tight shorts, Nikes, sweaty T-shirts and halter tops. They were a field hockey team in training, he guessed, and the fit-looking one in front was their captain, getting them in shape for the season.

They turned into the campus, and suddenly he was overwhelmed, swamped by a fantasy so powerful and thrilling that he could hardly see to drive. He imagined them in the locker room the plump one soaping herself in the shower, the redhead toweling her long copper-colored hair, the black girl stepping into a pair of white lace panties, the dykey team captain walking around naked, showing off her muscles--when something happened to terrify them. Suddenly they were all in a panic, wide-eyed with dread, screaming and crying, on the edge of hysteria. They ran this way and that, crashing into one another. The fat girl fell over and lay there weeping helplessly while the others trod on her, unheeding, as they tried desperately to hide, or find the door, or run away from whatever was scaring them.

He pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in neutral. He was breathing hard and he could feel his heartbeat hammering. This was the best one he had ever had. But a little piece of the fantasy was missing. What were they frightened of? He hunted about in his fertile imagination for the answer, and gasped with desire when it came to him: a fire. The place was ablaze, and they were terrified by the flames. They coughed and choked on the smoke as they milled about, half naked and frenzied. "My God," he whispered, staring straight ahead, seeing the scene like a movie projected on to the inside of the Datsun's windscreen.

After a while he calmed down. His desire was still strong, but the fantasy was no longer enough: it was like the thought of a beer when he had a raging thirst. He lifted the hem of his T-shirt and wiped the sweat from his face. He knew he should try to forget the fantasy, and drive on; but it was too wonderful. It would be terribly dangerous--he would go to jail for years if he were caught--but danger had never stopped him doing anything in his life. He struggled to resist temptation, though only for a second. "I want it," he murmured, and he turned the car around and drove through the grand gateway into the campus.

He had been here before. The university spread across a hundred acres of lawns and gardens and woodland. Its buildings were mostly made of a uniform red brick, with a few modern concrete-and-glass structures, all connected by a tangle of narrow roads lined with parking meters.

The hockey team had disappeared, but he found the gymnasium easily: it was a low building next to a running track, and there was a big statue of a discus thrower outside. He parked at a meter but did not put a coin in: he never put money in parking meters. The muscular captain of the hockey team was standing on the steps of the gym, talking to a guy in a ripped sweatshirt. He ran up the steps, smiling at the captain as he passed her, and pushed through the door into the building.

The lobby was busy with young men and women in shorts and headbands coming and going, rackets in their hands and sports bags slung over their shoulders. No doubt most of the college teams trained on Sundays. There was a security guard behind a desk in the middle of the lobby, checking people's student cards; but at that moment a big group of runners came in together and walked past the guard, some waving their cards and others forgetting, and the guard just shrugged his shoulders and went on reading The Dead Zone.

The stranger turned and looked at a display of silver cups in a glass case, trophies won by Jones Falls athletes. A moment later a soccer team came in, ten men and a chunky woman in studded boots, and he moved quickly to fall in with them. He crossed the lobby as part of their group and followed them down a broad staircase to the basement. They were talking about their game, laughing at a lucky goal and indignant about an outrageous foul, and they did not notice him.

His gait was casual but his eyes were watchful. At the foot of the stairs was a small lobby with a Coke machine and a pay phone under an acoustic hood. The men's locker room was off the lobby. The woman from the soccer team went down a long corridor, heading presumably for the women's locker room, which had probably been added as an afterthought by an architect who imagined there would never be many girls at Jones Falls, back in the days when "coeducational" was a sexy word.

The stranger picked up the pay phone and pretended to search for a quarter. The men filed into their locker room. He watched the woman open a door and disappear. That must be the women's locker room. They were all in there, he thought excitedly, undressing and showering and rubbing themselves with towels. Being so close to them made him feel hot. He wiped his brow with the hem of his T-shirt. All he had to do to complete the fantasy was to get them all scared half to death.

He made himself calm. He was not going to spoil it by haste. It needed a few minutes' planning.

When they had all disappeared, he padded along the corridor after the woman.

Three doors led off it, one on either side and one at the end. The door on the right was the one the woman had taken. He checked the end door and found that it led to a big, dusty room full of bulky machinery: boilers and filters, he guessed, for the swimming pool. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. There was a low, even electrical hum. He pictured a girl delirious with fright, dressed only in her underwear. He imagined a bra and panties with a pattern of flowers lying on the floor staring up at him with terrified eyes as he unbuckled his belt. He savored the vision for a moment, smiling to himself. She was just a few yards away. Right now she might be contemplating the evening ahead: maybe she had a boyfriend, and was thinking of letting him go all the way tonight; or she could be a freshman, lonely and a little shy, with nothing to do on Sunday night but watch Columbo; or perhaps she had a paper to deliver tomorrow and was planning to stay up all night finishing it. None of the above, baby. It's nightmare time.

He had done this kind of thing before, though never on such a scale. He had always loved to frighten girls, ever since he could remember. In high school there was nothing he liked better than to get a girl on her own, in a corner somewhere, and threaten her until she cried and begged for mercy. That was why he kept having to move from one school to another. He dated girls sometimes, just to be like the other guys, and have someone to walk into the bar on his arm. If they seemed to expect it he would bone them, but it always seemed kind of pointless.

Everyone had a kink, he figured: some men liked to put on women's clothing, others had to have a girl dressed in leather walk all over them with spike heels. One guy he knew thought the sexiest part of a woman was her feet: he got a hard-on standing in the women's footwear section of a department store, watching them put on shoes and take them off again.

His kink was fear. What turned him on was a woman trembling with fright. Without fear, there was no excitement.

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0517702967
• ISBN 13: 9780517702963
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 422