Book description
Jason Conrad, a man with the wealth of Bill Gates, decides to preserve
for posterity the seeds of as many animal and plant species as possible
in a vast and remote underground facility, taking the world's legitimate
seed banks and "frozen zoos" to a whole new level. Conrad's
secret doomsday complex, though, is staffed by a combination of
environmental experts and mercenaries who will stop at nothing to
achieve their once-noble ambitions. After a fellow police officer is
murdered and his award-winning German shepherd disappears, Montreal
Sergeant-Detective Irina Drach and her young partner, Sergeant-Detective
Hudson, connect the crime with a seed bank raid in Ardingly, England,
and the kidnapping of a Triple Crown Thoroughbred named Zarathustra.
Soon it becomes apparent that highly organized, ruthless abduction teams
are raiding seed banks around the world, as well as scooping up the
finest animal specimens from zoos, nature preserves, and the wild.
Despite the global implications and ballooning media interest, however,
Irina never forgets that her foremost aim is to solve the murder of a
friend and fellow officer. "I nearly missed out on this very good
thriller because it came presold as an "environmental"
novel...Im delighted to find that d leonard freeston, of Montreal, has a
message, talent and a sense of humour ... you'll love Irina Drach."
d leonard freeston has travelled extensively -- from Beijing and Bora
Bora to Budapest and Baja -- but his beloved Montreal has always been
home. After studying science at McGill University and obtaining
Distinction in Honours philosophy from Concordia University, he worked
as a rock and jazz critic, a mycologist, a rock drummer, a recording
engineer, a merchant seaman, a carnival barker, and a zookeeper. Some
years ago he wrote an enthusiastically received play called
Birth Rite
, using the pseudonym Eliot Carroll. Lately, while his wife runs the
tropical plant business he and she founded three decades ago, freeston
day-trades on the New York Stock Exchange between bouts of writing.
