Using a restricted FBI database, genetic researcher Jeanie Ferrami has located identical twins born to different mothers. Frightened by her bizarre discovery, she is determined to discover the truth at any cost—until she finds herself at the center of a scandal that could ruin her career.
To fight the charges, Jeannie plunges into a maze of hidden evidence. With growing horror, she uncovers a cynical, far-reaching conspiracy involving disturbing genetic experiments and some of the most powerful men in America—men who will kill to keep their secrets concealed.
Praise for Ken Follett and The Third Twin
“Follett infuses the book with an irresistible energy.”—People
“A provocative, well-paced, and sensational biotech thriller.”—Variety
“[A] page-turner . . . Follett is one of the smoothest suspense writers around, and The Third Twin will only enhance his reputation.”—Chicago Tribune
“[Follett] is a master of the fast-paced plot.”—The Washington Post
Young scientist Jeannie Ferrami discovers a baffling mystery. Two young men, law student Steve and convicted murderer Dan, appear to be identical twins. Yet they were born on different days, to different mothers. Jeannie investigates, but shadowy forces retaliate and Steve is accused of a terrible crime.
As Jeannie falls in love with him, can she be sure he is different from his evil twin? Solving the mystery will mean deadly danger.
Ken Follett’s view
Everyone is interested in twins. There are lots of twins in literature: Shakespeare, for example, used them. The idea that there is someone who looks exactly like you is very intriguing and dramatic. Clones are just like twins. Everyone is worried about cloning and something that makes people anxious is the ideal background subject for a thriller.
Steve, the hero of The Third Twin, is troubled when he finds he has an identical twin who is a murderer. He's led to examine himself and he worries that he is like his brother. He asks, “do my genes make me what I am? Or is it my upbringing and my environment?”
He comes to the conclusion that, in the end, he himself is responsible for what he is. That isn’t really a philosophical answer, but it is a personal answer, and it is one that I believe in. I don’t think that after about the age of 25 you can carry on blaming either your parents or your DNA for anything that you do. My readers don’t buy my books to learn about philosophy, of course, but they like a story to have a thoughtful side.
Editorial Reviews.
Amazon.com Review
Identical twins have been the storyteller's friend since Roman times. Master-scribbler Ken Follett does the arrangement one better in his latest yarn, The Third Twin. The heroine, Jeannie Ferrami, is a young professor at Jones Falls University (JFU)(think Johns Hopkins) who is investigating the balance of nature versus nurture in criminality. Driven by a secret from her past, Dr. Ferrami is overjoyed to find that a straight-arrow law student at JFU has an identical twin (raised separately) who is a convicted rapist. She is not overjoyed, however, when that man is arrested for raping her best friend. Surely Mr. Perfect couldn't be guilty--enter the evil masterminds, three Nixon-era compadres who have been toiling for decades to make America safe for racial purity. It's bad enough that one of the conspirators is Dr. Ferrami's boss, but another is eyeing the Oval Office. The young professor has stumbled onto a secret that could ruin them all, and it's only a matter of pages before bad things start to happen to the pair. The shortest distance between two points is a Follett plot. Look elsewhere for subtlety; entertainment, we got.
From Publishers Weekly
After three consecutive historical sagas (A Dangerous Fortune, etc.), Follett returns to the threshold of the 21st century with a provocative, well-paced and sensational biotech-thriller about the genetic manipulation of human embryos. Striving to prove that offspring genetically predisposed toward aggression can learn to sublimate their combative nature through childhood conditioning by socially responsible parents, a feisty and brilliant young university researcher, Jeannie Ferrami, develops software to identify identical twins who have been reared apart. When she stumbles across what seems to be an impossibility?identical twins born to different mothers at separate locations on different dates, Jeannie runs into serious trouble. Pitted against her is, foremost, her own faculty mentor, Berrington Jones, a world-renowned authority on biotechnical engineering. In devious partnership with another scientist and a bigoted U.S. senator with presidential aspirations, Jones is co-founder of Genetico, a small company that pioneered biogenetic research. The trio is now in the final stages of a lucrative friendly buyout by a corporate giant?and they don't take kindly to Jeannie's diggings. Multiples created by genetic manipulation aren't new to thrillers (e.g., Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil), but Follett puts a clever spin on the concept. And despite entwining outlandish plot strands of biotechnical skullduggery, a neo-Nazi candidate for president, academic politics and corporate greed with a steamy romance between Jeannie and one of the twins, the novel shines with the authenticity that's Follett's trademark as it explores the Internet and the mind-boggling data banks of personal statistics maintained by insurance empires, the Pentagon and the FBI. This isn't Follett's most sophisticated novel?it's heavy on the melodrama and on sexual violence?but its wicked narrative energy and catchy theme will likely propel it quickly onto the charts. Major ad/promo; simultaneous Random House audio and large-print editions; author satellite tour;
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Follet is most famous for his thrillers (e.g., Eye of the Needle, Audio Reviews, LJ 10/15/91). He has moved into other genres recently, but the present title represents a move back in the direction of the suspense thriller. After a friend is raped, Dr. Jeannie Ferrami finds certain anomalies in the apparently airtight case the police have against the chief suspect, a subject in her psychology research group. Jeannie's honest doubts about his guilt, plus the growing attraction between the two, spur her to push the search for the real rapist in spite of opposition from her university. There is tension and excitement here, though not comparable to Follett's earlier work, and the story flows smoothly enough through the lips of narrator Diane Venora. Too many of the plot advances are based on coincidence and sudden insight, however. Recommended for public libraries.?Gordon Cheatham, U.S. Army Lib. Div., Alexandria, Va.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
It's high concept all the way in Follett's latest breakneck-paced thriller: a scientist doing research on identical twins raised apart stumbles on a secret government project to breed the perfect soldier. The original plan fizzled in the Watergate era, but not before eight test-tube clones were born to unsuspecting women. When one of the clones walks into Jeannie Ferrami's university research project and another rapes Jeannie's best friend, an elaborately constructed house of cards begins to crumble. Soon Jeannie is fired, she falls in love with the nice clone (who is under indictment for the friend's rape), and she takes on an evil cabal of geneticists and right-wing politicians. This group, led by Jeannie's former boss, is determined to implement a breeding scheme designed to ensure that future Americans will be strong, blond, and pure. The coincidences multiply faster than mutant chromosomes, but if you stay focused on the next curve in the narrative road, you'll be too caught up in the action to worry about plausibility. Follett is as good as Grisham at keeping a totally plot-driven thriller zooming along on the thinnest of surfaces, like a car hydroplaning on a slick highway, and he's at his Grand Prix best here. Fans will love the ride, and movie producers will swoon at the high concept. Expect Julia Roberts as Jeannie and Brad Pitt as the eight clones (assuming he's through impersonating General Custer). Bill Ott
Review
Praise for Ken Follett and The Third Twin
“Follett infuses the book with an irresistible energy.”—People
“A provocative, well-paced, and sensational biotech thriller.”—Variety
“[A] page-turner . . . Follett is one of the smoothest suspense writers around, and The Third Twin will only enhance his reputation.”—Chicago Tribune
“[Follett] is a master of the fast-paced plot.”—The Washington Post
From the Publisher
"After three consecutive historical sagas, Follett returns to the threshold of the 21st century with a provocative, well-paced and sensational biotech-thriller about the genetic manipulation of human embryos."
--Publishers Weekly
"It's high concept all the way in Follett's breakneck-paced thriller...Follett is as good as Grisham at keeping a totally plot-driven thriller zooming along...fans will love the ride, and movie producers will swoon at the high concept."
--Bill Ott, Booklist
From the Inside Flap
An electrifying contemporary thriller energized by the chilling possibilities of genetic manipulation, The Third Twin is vintage Follett. In her research on the genetic components of aggression, Jeannie Farrari makes a startling discovery. Using a restricted FBI database, she has located a pair of identical twins who were born, impossibly, to different mothers. After unknowingly stumbling upon evidence of a conspiracy, Jeannie finds that her career--and her life--are in danger. Simultaneous hardcover release from Crown. 4 cassettes.
About the Author
Ken Follett was only twenty-seven when he wrote the award-winning EYE OF THE NEEDLE, which became an international bestseller. He has since written several equally successful novels including, most recently, WHITEOUT. He is also the author of non-fiction bestseller ON WINGS OF EAGLES. He lives with his family in London and Hertfordshire.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A heat wave lay over Baltimore like a shroud. The leafy suburbs were cooled by a hundred thousand lawn sprinklers, but the affluent inhabitants stayed inside with the air-conditioning on full blast. On North Avenue, listless hookers hugged the shade and sweated under their hairpieces, and the kids on the street corners dealt dope out of the pockets of baggy shorts. It was late September, but fall seemed a long way off.
A rusty white Datsun, the broken lens of one headlight fixed in place with an X of electrician's tape, cruised through a white working-class neighborhood north of downtown. The car had no air-conditioning, and the driver had rolled down all the windows. He was a handsome man of twenty-two wearing cutoff jeans, a clean white T-shirt and a red baseball cap with the word Security in white letters on the front. The plastic upholstery beneath his thighs was slippery with his perspiration, but he did not let it bother him. He was in a cheerful mood. The car radio was tuned to 92Q "Twenty jams in a row!" On the passenger seat was an open binder. He glanced at it occasionally, memorizing a typed page of technical terms for a test tomorrow. Learning was easy for him, and he would know the material after a few minutes of study.
At a stop light, a blonde woman in a convertible Porsche pulled alongside him. He grinned at her and said: "Nice car!" She looked away without speaking, but he thought he saw the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Behind her big sunglasses she was probably twice his age: most women in Porsches were. "Race you to the next stop light," he said. She laughed at that, a flirtatious musical laugh, then she put the stick shift into first with a narrow, elegant hand and tore away from the light like a rocket.
He shrugged. He was only practicing.
He drove by the wooded campus of Jones Falls University, an Ivy League college much swankier than the one he attended. As he passed the imposing gateway, a group of eight or ten women jogged by in running clothes: tight shorts, Nikes, sweaty T-shirts and halter tops. They were a field hockey team in training, he guessed, and the fit-looking one in front was their captain, getting them in shape for the season.
They turned into the campus, and suddenly he was overwhelmed, swamped by a fantasy so powerful and thrilling that he could hardly see to drive. He imagined them in the locker room the plump one soaping herself in the shower, the redhead toweling her long copper-colored hair, the black girl stepping into a pair of white lace panties, the dykey team captain walking around naked, showing off her muscles--when something happened to terrify them. Suddenly they were all in a panic, wide-eyed with dread, screaming and crying, on the edge of hysteria. They ran this way and that, crashing into one another. The fat girl fell over and lay there weeping helplessly while the others trod on her, unheeding, as they tried desperately to hide, or find the door, or run away from whatever was scaring them.
He pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in neutral. He was breathing hard and he could feel his heartbeat hammering. This was the best one he had ever had. But a little piece of the fantasy was missing. What were they frightened of? He hunted about in his fertile imagination for the answer, and gasped with desire when it came to him: a fire. The place was ablaze, and they were terrified by the flames. They coughed and choked on the smoke as they milled about, half naked and frenzied. "My God," he whispered, staring straight ahead, seeing the scene like a movie projected on to the inside of the Datsun's windscreen.
After a while he calmed down. His desire was still strong, but the fantasy was no longer enough: it was like the thought of a beer when he had a raging thirst. He lifted the hem of his T-shirt and wiped the sweat from his face. He knew he should try to forget the fantasy, and drive on; but it was too wonderful. It would be terribly dangerous--he would go to jail for years if he were caught--but danger had never stopped him doing anything in his life. He struggled to resist temptation, though only for a second. "I want it," he murmured, and he turned the car around and drove through the grand gateway into the campus.
He had been here before. The university spread across a hundred acres of lawns and gardens and woodland. Its buildings were mostly made of a uniform red brick, with a few modern concrete-and-glass structures, all connected by a tangle of narrow roads lined with parking meters.
The hockey team had disappeared, but he found the gymnasium easily: it was a low building next to a running track, and there was a big statue of a discus thrower outside. He parked at a meter but did not put a coin in: he never put money in parking meters. The muscular captain of the hockey team was standing on the steps of the gym, talking to a guy in a ripped sweatshirt. He ran up the steps, smiling at the captain as he passed her, and pushed through the door into the building.
The lobby was busy with young men and women in shorts and headbands coming and going, rackets in their hands and sports bags slung over their shoulders. No doubt most of the college teams trained on Sundays. There was a security guard behind a desk in the middle of the lobby, checking people's student cards; but at that moment a big group of runners came in together and walked past the guard, some waving their cards and others forgetting, and the guard just shrugged his shoulders and went on reading The Dead Zone.
The stranger turned and looked at a display of silver cups in a glass case, trophies won by Jones Falls athletes. A moment later a soccer team came in, ten men and a chunky woman in studded boots, and he moved quickly to fall in with them. He crossed the lobby as part of their group and followed them down a broad staircase to the basement. They were talking about their game, laughing at a lucky goal and indignant about an outrageous foul, and they did not notice him.
His gait was casual but his eyes were watchful. At the foot of the stairs was a small lobby with a Coke machine and a pay phone under an acoustic hood. The men's locker room was off the lobby. The woman from the soccer team went down a long corridor, heading presumably for the women's locker room, which had probably been added as an afterthought by an architect who imagined there would never be many girls at Jones Falls, back in the days when "coeducational" was a sexy word.
The stranger picked up the pay phone and pretended to search for a quarter. The men filed into their locker room. He watched the woman open a door and disappear. That must be the women's locker room. They were all in there, he thought excitedly, undressing and showering and rubbing themselves with towels. Being so close to them made him feel hot. He wiped his brow with the hem of his T-shirt. All he had to do to complete the fantasy was to get them all scared half to death.
He made himself calm. He was not going to spoil it by haste. It needed a few minutes' planning.
When they had all disappeared, he padded along the corridor after the woman.
Three doors led off it, one on either side and one at the end. The door on the right was the one the woman had taken. He checked the end door and found that it led to a big, dusty room full of bulky machinery: boilers and filters, he guessed, for the swimming pool. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. There was a low, even electrical hum. He pictured a girl delirious with fright, dressed only in her underwear. He imagined a bra and panties with a pattern of flowers lying on the floor staring up at him with terrified eyes as he unbuckled his belt. He savored the vision for a moment, smiling to himself. She was just a few yards away. Right now she might be contemplating the evening ahead: maybe she had a boyfriend, and was thinking of letting him go all the way tonight; or she could be a freshman, lonely and a little shy, with nothing to do on Sunday night but watch Columbo; or perhaps she had a paper to deliver tomorrow and was planning to stay up all night finishing it. None of the above, baby. It's nightmare time.
He had done this kind of thing before, though never on such a scale. He had always loved to frighten girls, ever since he could remember. In high school there was nothing he liked better than to get a girl on her own, in a corner somewhere, and threaten her until she cried and begged for mercy. That was why he kept having to move from one school to another. He dated girls sometimes, just to be like the other guys, and have someone to walk into the bar on his arm. If they seemed to expect it he would bone them, but it always seemed kind of pointless.
Everyone had a kink, he figured: some men liked to put on women's clothing, others had to have a girl dressed in leather walk all over them with spike heels. One guy he knew thought the sexiest part of a woman was her feet: he got a hard-on standing in the women's footwear section of a department store, watching them put on shoes and take them off again.
His kink was fear. What turned him on was a woman trembling with fright. Without fear, there was no excitement.
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