cover image The Gene of Life

The Gene of Life

Ted Takashima, trans. from the Japanese by Giuseppe di Martino. Museyon, $16.95 trade paper (360p) ISBN 978-1-940842-51-6

Over-used genre tropes mar this clunky thriller from Takashima (The Wall). In 2008, world-renowned genetic researcher Max Knight is in Berlin when he’s snatched off the street by Nazi hunter Joe Feldman, who gives him a bottle containing a human hand obtained after a recent bombing at a neo-Nazi rally. The hand belongs to Carius Gehlen, a Nazi Waffen-SS colonel, who would now be 111 years old. Joe asks Max to examine the hand’s DNA, and Max does so at a laboratory, aided by an attractive researcher, Katya Lang, who soon becomes his love interest. The next day, a bomb explodes under the laboratory, destroying the DNA material and wounding Gehlen’s wife, who dies, but not before giving Joe, Max, and Katya a clue that eventually leads them to an ancient tribe deep in the jungles of Brazil. There they find evidence of modern-day Nazis, who have found the key to immortality. Awkward prose is a minus (“she could see Max was racking his brain”), and no one will be surprised to learn that Adolf Hitler may still be alive. Thriller fans have seen this all before, done better. (June)