First published 2009
Louisiana state veterinarian Lorna Polk boards an abandoned fishing trawler that washed ashore carrying caged exotic animals. The vessel was part of a black market smuggling operation, but these creatures are wrong in ways that chill her. Each animal shows disturbing mutations and unnaturally heightened intelligence. Lorna teams up with U.S. Border Patrol Agent Jack Menard, a man connected to her troubled past, to trace the source of these genetic aberrations. Their investigation leads back seven years to the fall of Baghdad, where looters raided a secret underground laboratory and unleashed something terrible. Now one of the mutated beasts has escaped the shipwreck and roams free. As Lorna and Jack dig deeper, they uncover a terrorist plot that threatens to redefine humanity itself through twisted biological experimentation.
Genres: adventure, mystery, crime, action
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, investigation, team-up
Setting: Baghdad, Louisiana
Period: 2000s
398 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow
Content warnings: body-horror, graphic-violence, medical-trauma