Spiral

A Novel

By: Paul McEuen

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

The race is on to stop the devastating proliferation of the ultimate bioweapon: a drug-resistant fungal infection.

“A fascinating ride through a world of bioweaponry, nanoscience, murder, and international intrigue . . . one of the best debut thrillers I’ve read in a long time.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston.

ITW THRILLER AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL • NERO AWARD NOMINEE

When fungi specialist Nobel laureate Liam Connor is found dead at the bottom of one of Ithaca, New York’s famous gorges, his research collaborator, Cornell professor of nanoscience Jake Sterling, refuses to believe it was suicide. Why would one of the world’s most eminent biologists, a eighty-six-year old man in good health who survived some of the darkest days of the Second World War, have chosen to throw himself off a bridge? And who was the mysterious woman caught on camera at the scene? Soon it becomes clear that a cache of supersophisticated nanorobots—each the size of a spider—has disappeared from the dead man’s laboratory.

Stunned by grief, Jake, Liam’s granddaughter, Maggie, and Maggie’s nine-year-old son, Dylan, try to put the pieces together. They uncover ingeniously coded messages Liam left behind pointing toward a devastating secret he gleaned off the shores of war-ravaged Japan and carried for more than sixty years. What begins as a quest for answers soon leads to a horrifying series of revelations at the crossroads of biological warfare and nanoscience. At this dangerous intersection, a skilled and sadistic assassin, an infamous Japanese war criminal, and a ruthless U.S. government official are all players in a harrowing game of power, treachery, and intrigue—a game whose winner will hold the world’s fate literally in the palm of his hand.

©2011 Paul McEuen (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

“Spiral by Paul McEuen carries the reader on a fascinating ride through a world of bioweaponry, nanoscience, murder, and international intrigue. This gripping story, partially based on Unit 731, the biological warfare group of the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, is one of the best debut thrillers I’ve read in a long time.” (Douglas Preston, author of Impact and The Monster of Florence)

“Spiral is an all-too-frighteningly-real tale. This is an exciting debut.” (Steve Berry, author of The Emperor’s Tomb)

“A riveting story that combines international intrigue with fascinating inventions such as the MicroCrawler, a spiderlike robot with knife-sharp legs. In more ways than one, Spiral will get under your skin.” (Mark Alpert, author of Final Theory)