The Dar Lumbre Chronicles ISBN: 9780692086162 assumed published, copyright and written by Don Johnson.
The author has devised an interesting plot where a highly intelligent geneticist, Dar Lumbre, was about to be arrested by the government for his continued work in the field. Although he had engineered the only viable heart replacement available, one evolving from actual heart tissue. They were concerned about other of his experiments and decided he must be apprehended and kept from continuing. The heavily controlling government was unable to find him in spite of all their efforts. The book opens a hundred years later, where the government has evolved into an all-encompassing power where there were only two political parties that alternated years of control, but regardless, all housing, food allotment and distribution of other necessities were administered by the ruling body. There was a requirement for citizen enrollment in one or the other party with non-registrants considered ‘Outsiders” who were forced to survive the best they could. Trouble begins with the DL-666 heart tissue losing ability to function properly and two extremely intelligent geneticists Craig Hopkins and Annie Lee working for the owner, Cal Tech, are assigned to discover why it is failing. The new laboratory director who was hired to ‘turn the company around’ because it was losing revenue, ultimately dismisses Craig. Because the wife of the government’s President suddenly requires a heart transplant, Craig is rehired and he and Annie continue to make advances in repairing the damage. Numerous other complications arise with a long-existent, but secret, Dar Lumbre Society surfacing and registering the ‘Outcasts’, an overwhelming majority of whom believe that eventually the missing Dar Lumbar wil reappear a hundred years after he disappeared while in his late fifties or sixties. Numerous supportive characters add levels of suspense to the tale as it evolves and any further details would be a complete disservice to the prospective reader.
Discussion: a well written, spaced and paced, sci-fi, mystery, thriller with extensive details on genetics presented in a readable fashion.
5* Pleasant, easy to read sci-fi/mystery/thriller involving genetics.