Mark of the Beast

Anekwe’s didactic first novel, a medical thriller, fails to deliver on the promise of its provocative premise. When Dr. Regina Dickerson, a top research scientist at the University of California, La Jolla Medical School, discovers a violence-inducing identifying genetic trait in the DNA of convicted murderers, further experiments on vicious offenders yield a startling discovery: HLA B locus may be linked to the fabled biblical “number of the Beast” associated with people devoted to Satan. Dickerson’s work sparks media outrage and political controversy, and exposes a drab conspiracy of evildoers determined to silence her. Will Dickerson, a prophet of predestination, survive? Alas, few readers will care. Anekwe, an M.D. and professor at Indiana University Northwest Medical Center, knows his science, but pedestrian prose and predictable plot developments, on top of the book’s moralistically rigid approach, will limit its appeal largely to those who share the religious faith the author evinces in his acknowledgments. Agent: Pamela Nelson, Landela. (Jan.)