The Trudeau Vector Hardcover - 2005

by Jurjevics, Juris

As the international team of scientists at the spectacular Trudeau Research Center prepares for six months of unrelenting Arctic winter, three of their colleagues are found dead, their pupils missing and their bodies contorted in ghastly, unnatural positions. An American epidemiologist, the talented and unconventional Dr. Jessica Hanley, is summoned to investigate the medical riddle posed by these grisly deaths. At the same time, a decorated Russian admiral in Moscow is assigned a top-secret mission to locate and retrieve a Russian submarine that has suddenly and inexplicably vanished from central command's radar.

The die is cast. Their lives will cross in Jurjevics's engrossing debut thriller, brilliant and terrifying in its medical and historical accuracy. Hanley's inquiry and Admiral Rudenko's quest bring them up against hazards much bigger than microbes scientific megalomania, lingering cold war tensions, world-threatening environmental toxins, all unfolding in the unforgiving extremes of the Arctic.

A thriller that superbly depicts the precarious, volatile area where science and global politics can clash with disastrous results, The Trudeau Vector is reminiscent of the classic suspense of Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal and the terrifying realism of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. With its disquieting and revelatory authenticity, readers cannot help but fall under its spell and ask themselves, 'Could this really happen?'