The Babel Effect [Hardcover]

Daniel Hecht (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 19, 2000

With all the imaginative depth and narrative power of Michael Crichton's Timeline or Jurassic Park, The Babel Effect is an electrifying, thinking person's thriller based on cutting-edge neurological and genetic research. From the author of the widely acclaimed Skull Session, The Babel Effect artfully brings the speculative thriller to new literary heights.

Is violence a virus? Can your genes make you a killer? Why are we so willing to hurt each other? In The Babel Effect, the brilliant husband-and-wife research team of Ryan and Jessamine McCloud are charged with answering these urgent questions. Beginning as a neurological study of murderers on death row, their research explodes into an investigation into the biomedical foundations of human history. The quest takes them from prison cells to research labs to war zones throughout the world and forces them to doubt their most  basic assumptions about the human species, about themselves, and about their marriage.

Combining systems theory with modern epidemiology, they soon learn that our propensity for violence resembles a contagious disease. But is the human carnage of the last hundred years an ancient plague or a new nightmare? Can they identify the cause and find a cure? As their discoveries reveal frightening secrets about multinational corporations, clandestine military programs, and millennial religious cults, they realize that finding the answers depends on a still more urgent and terrifying question: Can they survive the search?

When an unknown enemy steals their data and abducts Jessamine, the FBI investigation stalls, and Ryan realizes that it is up to him alone to find his pregnant wife. He soon finds that to learn where she is, he must discover who she is -- and confront the question of whether we can ever really know the one we love.

As real as the astonishing and disquieting news coming out of today's biotechnology revolution and as disturbing as our suspicions of global conspiracy, The Babel Effect provokes us with an astonishing perspective on human nature as it brings us face-to-face with our most unspeakable fears -- and our brightest hopes. Though The Babel Effect is part thriller, part mystery, it is at its core the very human tale of one man who simply seeks to know his wife -- to find her and love her again.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Genesis Project, headed by Ryan and Jess McCloud, is researching a fascinating thesis: that violence is a virus, that evil is genetically based, and that neurology can prove what psychology only suggests. A billionaire who heads the world's largest media and technology empire believes the McClouds are onto something with enormous potential value and agrees to underwrite their project, which starts with brain scans of death row inmates and progresses to war zones and killing fields all over the world.

When pregnant Jess is kidnapped by a religious leader, who fears that science will destroy his faith-based empire, the action ratchets up several levels, skipping over some of the hard science that keeps this would-be thriller mired in detail much of the time. Author Daniel Hecht posits as good a raison d'être for the root causes of violence as any other suspense novelist; it's an intriguing idea, well-worked out in the plot. And Jess McCloud, vainly trying to reconcile her decidedly unscientific faith with scientific empiricism, is an interestingly complex character. Unfortunately, she's missing for much of the novel, and her husband, whose efforts to retrace her research in order to find her, is a much less fascinating hero. But that won't stop fans of Robin Cook, Michael Crichton, et al. for sticking with Hecht to the last page. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Is the propensity to violence a kind of virus? That's the intriguing question addressed by this engrossing thriller, in which a research team's investigation of man's inhumanity to man leads to a modern-day Heart of Darkness climax. The Joseph Conrad echo is deliberateDcrucial scenes in the novel take place in the CongoDbut the science is pure 21st century. Ryan McCloud and his African-American wife, Jessamine, are participants in a think tank near Boston when they accept funding from a company called Ridder Global to search out the causes of modern evil. Some members of their team focus on genetics, others on high-tech contamination, but Jess is fascinated with the viral angle, christening it the Babel Effect, after a term used by a televangelist she finds curiously compelling. Ryan, meanwhile, worries that a personal agenda is clouding Jess's judgmentDher sister Allison was killed by terrorists at GhizaDbut he has to believe that Jess is on the right track when he returns from a harrowing trip to the Congo to discover that she's been kidnapped. Hecht (Skull Session) keeps the science subordinate to the characters and the suspense, which is no mean feat considering that most of the novel's midsection has Ryan retracing Jess's research steps in order to find out what she was working on. The writing is clear and concise, and while there will be the usual Crichton comparisons, they rebound to Hecht's credit, for Hecht has his own voice and agenda. The moving climax proves that Hecht is a writer with both skill and soul. This suspenser is for readers who demand texture, intriguing information and a provocative thesis along with their thrills. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (December 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609607294
• ISBN-13: 978-0609607299
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,507,854 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three books in one, January 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Babel Effect (Hardcover)

I will admit a connection to the book; I did some of the scientific research that backs it up, and I know Daniel Hecht. I never actually read the book till it came out, but when it did, I read it through in a few long sittings.

What I found was three books in one. On the surface, it is a good international thriller, with a talented but flawed hero, a team of realistic supporting characters, some whiz-bang science and spy tradecraft, and a varied assortment of bad guys. I appreciated the fact that the violence was not romanticized, and the consequences of violence had equal billing. The second book, contained within the first, is the story of a man who drinks too much, battles with anger, guilt, and his own limited emotional perception, and is afraid that his wife is drifting away from him. His search for his wife is literal, emotional, and globally metaphoric.

The third book, paralleling the first two, is a scientific and philosophical exploration of the fundamental question of evil. Hecht provides no easy answers, but provides a number of interesting avenues of thought. The one that catches me is this: Are good and evil human-created concepts that we impose on events, or are these concepts inherent in the structure of the natural world?

It is the love story, the hero's inner struggles, and the wide philosophical scope that lift this book above the usual cold war spy story or nuke terrorist novel. It is a fitting second novel for Daniel Hecht, after Skull Session. Skull Session was a gothic murder mystery that explored the question of human destiny and genetics by way of neurology. Hecht entertains us and makes us think.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful And Suspenseful, January 2, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Babel Effect (Hardcover)

I can't remember reading many books that made me think so much, all the while engaging me in such a well woven story. This is, perhaps, the only suspense novel that I've ever given to other people to read just so that we could discuss the underlying ideas. I'd recommend The Babel Effect as highly as anything I've read in a long time.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly conceived!, January 9, 2001

By 

Charlotte Vale-Allen (CT USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Babel Effect (Hardcover)

As he demonstrated in Skull Session, Daniel Hecht is a gifted writer of formidable imagination. He is a producer of trenchant prose on wonderfully unique themes. In The Babel Effect, he tackles the malaise that affects much of the general population as a result of escalating violence, and suggests a very viable thesis for the underlying cause(s). This is not light reading, but it's a powerful, thought-provoking book that ultimately catches fire and burns, hot and bright, right to the end. Compelling, fascinating--all the good adjectives apply to a very special book. I recommend both Skull Session and The Babel Effect. Both will stay with you for a long, long time.