FRAMESHIFT

Another near-future science-fictional thriller from Ontario resident Sawyer (the 1995 Nebula Awardwinning author of The Terminal Experiment, not reviewed). French-Canadian molecular biologist Pierre Tardivel does research for the Human Genome Project in California—and has a 50-50 chance of dying of the incurable genetic Huntington's disease. His girlfriend, psychologist Molly Bond, is a short-range telepath; so when Pierre narrowly escapes being murdered, Molly knows the knife-wielder had in fact been paid to kill Pierre. But why? Well, Pierre discovers that other clients of Condor, his health insurance company, are being eliminated—clients with potentially expensive health problems. Molly, meanwhile, unable to conceive normally, agrees to an IVF procedure conducted free of charge by Pierre's boss, the Nobel laureate Burian Klimus—but he impregnates her with genes extracted from a Neanderthal's bones! Worse still, after a visit from Avi Meyer of the Justice Department, Pierre wonders whether Klimus might be the infamous Ivan the Terrible, of the Treblinka extermination camp! Conspicuously overplotted and unwieldy—the whole Ivan the Terrible subplot would have been better eliminated—but exciting and engrossing, if increasingly improbable.