The Genesis Modification - Softcover

Krueger, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0954097718 ISBN 13: 9780954097714

Publisher: Steinkrug Publications Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

The Genesis Modification is against a background of an industrialized world devastated by a series of environmental disasters. Cities are choked by vegetation and the parts of the countryside which haven't been reduced to a wilderness are farmed by prisoners and patrolled by the army. The action moves from London to The Ukraine and series of environmental then to California, where the population of Silicon Valley has become a wasteland. While The Genesis Modification is set in the future it is an exciting and entertaining comment on the way we live today and the failure of our political parties to deal with the dangers of globalization. The novel is also a warning of what will happen if we continue to treat our environment as a waste disposal system.

About this title

From the Publisher

For Mike Allchurch the investigation, into the death of an American in a run down London hotel, was just another case his under resourced department would not be able to solve.

When leads started falling into his lap and the finger of suspicion pointed to leading members of the ruling Green Party, Allchurch knew it was time to stamp the file 'Case Closed.' However his young assistant, Brian Tyler, had other ideas - intrigued by anomalies in the case and links to the destruction of a GM crop trial some forty years earlier, Tyler becomes engrossed in an aspect of Green politics his teachers had omitted from history lessons.

The two detectives turn up a trail of bodies and soon find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Inside the case lay a yellowing English newspaper and an American passport. The passport was in the name of Toby Troxley. Brian opened it and Mike could see some resemblance between the photograph and the lifeless face staring at him. Brian pointed with a pencil to the name in the passport, then to a paragraph on the front page of the Wisbech Echo: ‘Yesterday fifteen people were given sentences ranging from six months to two years for their part in the violent attack, at Whiteside Farm, which left Police Sergeant Bryant struggling for his life. The longest sentence was handed out to David Fairchild, head of the UKGA, the group claiming responsibility for the destruction of eight other GM crop trials. Although no-one has been charged with the attack on Sergeant Bryant, the federal authorities in the US have been asked to help trace Toby Troxley. Troxley disappeared after he was remanded on bail by Norwich Crown Court.’
Mike sat back and thought for a moment, then turned to Brian. “Yes, you were right to call me,” he said in a muffled voice.
Brian cupped his hand to his ear. “Sorry, sir?”
Mike slid the mask from his mouth, but was not going to repeat himself. “This is complicated, isn’t it?”
Brian disliked ‘complicated’. It meant writing things down, remembering things, looking things up, reading things, and (in this case) lugging a body around rather than handing it over to a disposal team. As if he could read Brian’s thoughts, Mike said, “Suppose we’d better get this chap back for an autopsy.”
Without his mask on, Mike could taste the foul air inside the room. He felt thirsty and was tempted to ask the girl for some water, but decided against it after noticing the dust-covered glass on the writing desk. “Brian, I left in a bit of a hurry and forgot my things. Any chance of a drink of water?”
“No problem,” said Brian, plunging his hand into his rucksack and pulling out a bottle.
Mike unscrewed the cap of the bottle. As he gulped down two mouthfuls of the lukewarm water, he watched Brian crouch down beside the body and place a pencil next to the bloody patch on the left-hand side of the head. He tilted the pencil until it lined up with the bullet hole in the wall. Brian then slowly and steadily moved the pencil closer to the head. “Sticking a pencil through his ear is hardly a substitute for an autopsy,” said Mike.
Brian snatched the pencil away from the head and sprang to his feet. “No, sir. Sorry.” He paused for a moment, then screwed up his nose. “It’s getting a bit thick in here. I’ll open the window.”
The girl stepped forward and shouted, but it was too late. As soon as Brian released the catches, the sash window crashed to the bottom of the frame, sending a shower of broken glass into the room.
“That’s what happened to the one at the end of the corridor,” she said.
“Now the flies will get in.” Mike sighed, and after screwing the top back on the water bottle handed it back to Brian. “Pop across the road, there’s a good lad, and get a van and driver to take this body back. See if you can get something with a refrigerator in it.”
Brian moved quickly to the door. As he did so, Mike called out. “Let’s have your phone and I’ll warn Hutchinson we have a customer for him.”
“Sorry, sir. Battery’s flat.”

Mike sat for a moment watching the shadows of the leaves on the tree outside dance backwards and forwards across the wall. He turned in the chair. The girl was leaning in the doorway staring at the body. Mike beckoned to her, then pointed to the bed. “Not the first body you have ever seen, is it?”
“No, sir.” The woman sat down on the bed. She had long black hair which was well combed, piercing blue eyes and a slightly lined face which led Mike to estimate her age as somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. In fact, she was only twenty.
Mike turned himself and the chair around to face the woman.
“Your name?”
“Tate. Caroline Tate, sir.”
“You can drop the ‘sir’, Caroline.”
“OK, s...”
“Give me your S-Card number.”
The girl reached into her pocket and took out the card, which entitled her to three meals a day at any restaurant. She read off the numbers: “Zero three, twelve, nineteen, twenty-seven, thirty-three, thirty-six and forty-eight.”
Mike wrote down the sequence of numbers. “You’re from the East End. Seen lots of dead people there, I should think.”
“One or two.”
“The man who runs the hotel, who is he?”
“My father.”
“Your mother?”
“My mother has gone.”
Often it was impossible to determine, during casual conversation, whether the friend or relative being discussed had died ten years ago or had merely left the room. This was a society that, in the absence of any belief in the afterlife, was condemned to think of the dead in the present tense.
Once images of children with distended bellies, brushing flies from their faces as they shuffled through the streets of some half-forgotten war-torn city, were confined to television news programmes. Viewers had been implored to care by smartly dressed correspondents who did not give a damn.
Then famine and disease crept up into the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps tired of experiencing them third-hand, we invited them into the developed world. Soon we too were stepping over bodies in the street. People spent weekends burying, or preparing for cremation, the victims of famine, disease, or a soldier’s bullet. Families and neighbourhoods disappeared and workforces were decimated. The loss was so immense that those who survived were unable to translate the victims into the past tense. Relatives never ‘died’; they had just ‘gone’ or become dead.

Edition details

• Publisher: Steinkrug Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0954097718
• ISBN 13: 9780954097714
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360