Summaries

Slatewiper

by Lewis Perdue

Genetic engineering has created a new form of simple life which is perverted into a lethal bioweapon able to target ethnic groups.
The new form of life is harmless by itself but is used to re-activate an ancient, catastrophically deadly retrovirus lurking in the uncharted introns of the human genome.
This ancient "Slatewiper" retrovirus was responsible for the major population decline in the dawn of humankind and only a single base mutation rendered it harmless and prevented the extinction of homo sapiens.
The ancient retrovirus is a time-bomb hidden in every human being.
The new form of simple life has been altered to reactivate the retroviral Slatewiper sequence when it's found in the presence of specific gene sequences such as those found in targeted geographic or ethnic populations.
The action starts when Lara Blackwood, genetic engineering entrepreneur and presidential advisor, receives a call from an old college friend who asks her help in solving a ghastly epidemic in Tokyo. She agrees to help and, with a single phone call, sets in motion a chain of death and mayhem stretching from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., Amsterdam, and Japan.
To her horror, she discovers her life's work in developing cures for ethnic-linked genetic diseases has been perverted to produce a revolutionary new weapon that kills by turning people's own chromosomes against them.
Now Lara must risk assassination to expose the conspiracy behind "Slatewiper"-before a nightmarish terrorist scheme threatens the entire human race with extinction.
Originally written in 1993, Slatewiper was deemed too far-fetched by publishers, but ten years later, the technology and world events have caught up with the plot.
A running discussion throughout Slatewiper is the issue of "race" as it is popularly conceived, its scientific relevance, significance to society and culture as well as its two-edged blade that can be used for good (better disease treatment) and evil (genocide).

From Kirkus Reviews

Molecular geneticist Lara Blackwood, cofounder and CEO of GenIntron, a bioengineering lab, is an entrepreneur who develops new disease treatments with synthetic genes made from junk DNA in the human genome.
When Tokyo is hit hard by a supermysterious, fast-acting "Korean disease" universally fatal to its victims, Lara, fired from GenIntron by its new parent company in Japan, Daiwan Ichiban, is taken on by the White House as presidential aide in genetic development. As it happens, not a single Japanese, only the detested Koreans in Tokyo’s Korean ghetto, die of the Korean Leprosy in the test run of an ethnic bioweapon that focuses the disease on people bearing Korean genes.
The Slatewiper, whose synthetic gene reduces people to slime and then into a bloodburst, is the weapon by which Daiwan Ichiban’s top gun Tokutaru Kurata means to purify Japan of foreigners and boost fervent nationalism.
The Saudis want GenIntron to formulate a bug that will kill all Jews in Israel, while actual production of the materials will be in Japan at Daiwan Ichiban. The president himself, apparently fearful of Tokutaru Kurata, warns Lara off from pursuing the source of the Korean Leprosy.
But Lara has won two Olympic medals and begun a solo round-the-world sail, is tall for a woman, a martial-arts adept, and not to be dissuaded by a mere president. Clearly, the day must come when she goes man-to-man with Sheila Gaillard, the bad guys’ hugely vicious and skillful hit woman who murders one by one all of Lara’s scientific helpers as Lara works undercoverto unearth a bio-weapon for which she is partly responsible. And not even Sheila having her face splashed with frozen hydrogen can stop her.
Rich research for science/action thrills.

From Booklist

In Tokyo, a particularly violent and deadly plague has broken out. Inexplicably, it seems as if the virus only uses Koreans as its carrier. Enter Lara Blackwood, a genetic engineer recruited to fight this virus that somehow piggybacks itself on people with specific genetic characteristics. Ejected from her own company, Lara sees in this investigation her chance to get herself back in the research game, but she doesn't count on uncovering a genetic weapon of unimaginable power, a weapon that appears to have its origins in her own work. Like the high-tech medical thrillers of Michael Crichton, this novel deftly combines hard science and narrative panache. Perdue has crafted a story that grips the reader's imagination: Can this be real? Is it possible for such a weapon to exist? Remarkably, Perdue unflinchingly treads on Crichton's turf but emerges with a novel that feels fresh and original. A must for medical-thriller devotees. David Pitt Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Publisher's Weekly

Humanity's very existence is at stake in this latest hair-raiser by Perdue (Daughter of God), a no-holds-barred biogenetic thriller. Lara Blackwood, founder of GenIntron, a company devoted to gene manipulation as a method of fighting genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs and sickle-cell anemia, is a tough hybrid of brilliant scientist, beauty and fighter.

As the novel begins, GenIntron has been forced into economic difficulty and bought by the internationally powerful Japanese Daiwa Ichiban Corporation and its racist head, Tokutaro Kurata. In his first move, Kurata perverts Blackwood's work by creating a new genetic weapon, graphically named Slatewiper, with which he intends to rid Tokyo of its hated Korean immigrants.

Thousands of dead Koreans fill the streets, and puzzled doctors postulate a new and unknown disease. Kurata dreams of reviving Japanese militarism, refusing to acknowledge defeat in WWII and denying the horrifying Japanese atrocities of that war and earlier Asian wars. He plans to sell the deadly gene to nations wishing to eliminate their own minorities, or for use against enemies, while plotting to promote Japanese superiority and racial purity.