At the start of this routine political thriller from the Shlians (Double Illusion
), Dr. Ni-Fu Cheng arranges for his daughter to escape to America from Communist China in 1949. Forty years later, Foreign Minister Lin plots to regain control of the Chinese Communist Party by coercing Dr. Cheng into revealing the results of his research into increasing human longevity. To force the scientist's hand, teams are dispatched to the U.S. to find Cheng's granddaughter, Dr. Lili Quan, a resident at an L.A. hospital. Dylan O'Hara, a fellow doctor who may have romantic designs on Quan, happens to be conducting research of his own into the immune system to identify the gene controlling aging. Full of clichéd prose (“Had he been a fool to fall in love with someone from such a different world?”), this novel fails to use to best advantage the dramatic events leading to the Tiananmen Square massacre. (June)
