The Seventh Sun

Lester’s imaginatively plotted if flawed first novel, an eco-thriller, introduces computer scientist Dan Clifford. A genius programmer with a personal bartending robot and a wise Native American mentor, Dan is blindsided by some unethical choices made by the new president of NeuroSys, the Atlanta-based tech company he founded. His investigations and some strong coincidences lead him to the body of geologist Carl Jamison, who perished in Honduras. This, in turn, leads him to Carl’s colleague Rachel Sullivan, a gorgeous marine biologist with a penchant for taking dangerous risks. As Dan and Rachel dig deeper into the mystery of Carl’s death and NeuroSys’s issues, they come across not only corrupt businessmen and politicians but a potential biological threat to all humankind. Lester has a confident voice that works as well for delivering business and technical plot concepts as it does for action sequences, but his characters fail to develop beyond their broad outlines. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Literary Agency. (Apr.)