The Chosen Dead

Scotsdale, Arizona, 1982. Roy Emmet Hudson, a man working at the very forefront of gene engineerring, is shot dead. Seven years later, as the Berlin Wall falls, another scientist, Professor Roman Slavsky, flees the USSR for the West. In Bristol, the present day, Coroner Jenny Cooper begins to investigate two very troubling deaths. Adam Jordan, recently returned from aid work in the Sudan, fell from a motorway bridge, plummeting into the traffic below. Then a teenage girl, Sophie Freeman, died just hours aft er showing symptoms of a terrifying new strain of meningitis. Confronted with more questions than answers and finding her enquiries obstructed at every turn, Jenny begins to question whether somehow, inexplicably, these deaths may be linked. Before she can begin to piece together the few perplexing clues, more victims are unearthed. Soon, desperate to discover the truth she knows is out there, her inquests under threat, Jenny will fi nd herself on the run both from agents fromher own government and shady, powerful men who operate beyond the law, as the dark horrors of Hudson and Slavsky's research begin to make themselves known.