Threshold

by Ben Mezrich

Overview

For a lifetime, he has channeled the fear and guilt of a childhood trauma into an impassioned mission to save others. Now, inside 72 hours, Jeremy Ross will have to defuse an insidious plot to genetically rewire the human race. And in a heartbeat, allied with an ex-lover on a quest of her own, he must confront a threat more devastating than any living creature can imagine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446605212
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/1997
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ben Mezrich is the New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires (adapted by Aaron Sorkin into the David Fincher film The Social Network), Bringing Down the House (adapted into the #1 box office hit film 21), The Antisocial Network, and many other bestselling books. His books have sold over six million copies worldwide.

What People are Saying About This

F. Paul Wilson

An amazing debut! Threshold kept me turning pages until the wee hours...such poise and assuredness for a first novel is almost criminal...Mezrich has an innate ability to sustain the narrative...plus what he's got to say about genetics is extemely important...Mezrich has got the gift.

Harry Stein

Exciting, innovative, and hugely entertaining...Mezrich establishes himself as a thriller writer to watch.

Editorial Reviews

In this competently constructed entry in the medical thriller sweepstakes, geneticist Jeremy Ross agrees to help an old girlfriend investigate her father's death. The inquiry leads him to a massive secret research facility in South Carolina, and it does not help Ross (or the yarn he's in) that he possesses a collection of trendy psychological difficulties. Overall, the plot profusely sprouts clues, chases, abductions, mysterious deaths, piteous children-the whole nine yards of the thriller genre. Despite this and the hype HarperCollins plans, the book is generally well done--that is, it certainly keeps one turning pages. Most of its limitations are imposed by genre requirements, and the rest seem to arise from its being a first novel by a clearly gifted but still somewhat awkward writer. Have no doubt, though, that a wide range of thriller fans will thoroughly enjoy it.

Roland Green

Twenty-seven-year-old Mezrich makes a bid for Grisham-level success with this flimsy thriller featuring a mad scientist bent on creating a master race—though cardboard characters and a predictable plot keep getting in his way.

Jeremy Ross is happily immersed in the chaotic life of a fourth-year medical student at New York City Hospital on the night that Robin Kelly, a former girlfriend when the two were at Dartmouth, drops into the emergency room to ask for his help. Robin—tearful, terrified, yet lovely as ever—confides to Jeremy her suspicion that the recent death of her father, Secretary of Defense Warren T. Walker, was the result of foul play. She wants Jeremy to steal a copy of her father's death certificate and tell her what he thinks. Dazzled by Robin's beauty, the 24-year-old genetics enthusiast performs as asked—and what he finds makes him wonder whether someone could have introduced a deadly virus into Walker's cells. Jeremy's concern—along with evidence that Robin is indeed being threatened with murder—leads him to the Tucsome Project for Genetic Research, a facility funded largely by the Defense Department, and one that Walker was known to have visited. Enlisting as an intern at the Project, Jeremy investigates the recent death of a researcher with whom Walker had had contact; snoops into the secret activities of charismatic lab director and genetics genius Jason Waters; and wonders about the horrifically disabled children under study at the facility's adjoining hospital. It's hardly surprising that Walker's death turns out to have been genetically engineered—but the murder of a government official is only the tip of the iceberg here, as Jeremy learns while fighting his own nightmares and trying to protect his former love.

TV-level melodrama on a big-screen budget.

Kirkus Reviews