The Babel Effect

By Daniel Hecht

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0609607294
• ISBN13: 9780609607299
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

An amazing feat!

This is an international suspense thriller and powerful love story with an usual plot. The main characters are members of a creative and broad gauge think tank commissioned to figure out the causes of human violence. This is a detective story in its own right, and involves a sorting through the many possible explanations. But mysterious--sinister and violent--forces don't want them to succeed. This story began to make me wonder if we are really conscious beings capable of making human choices, whether we are just vehicles for perpetuating DNA. What a web the author weaves! I found that the story picked up the pace as it progressed and the characters contended with dangerous challenges and contemplated the meaning of their lives. The action is especially grippimg in the midst of a vividly described civil war in Africa. READ THIS BOOK!

Three books in one

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.

A great thinker

See storyline above.Daniel Hecht has written a superb novel that makes you think. I like that. A great intellectual thriller with action, suspense and emotion. A highly researched novel concerning genetics, and the idea that evil and violence can be hereditary or passed on via memes or virus's. A wide range of characters provide a wide array of opinions on this subject. Great subject. Great story. Great charcters.Highly recommended for all.

Brilliantly conceived!

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.

Thoughtful And Suspenseful

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.