Title: Genetic Imperfections
Author: Steve Hadden
Publisher: Telemachus Press
ISBN: B007NNGO34
Pages: 270, Paperback/Kindle
Genre: Fiction/Thriller
Reviewed by: Brandon Nolta, Pacific Book Review
Book Review
Have you ever had a traumatic event completely change the course of your life? David Wellington, the protagonist of Steve Hadden’s new thriller Genetic Imperfections, suffers through two of them in the course of the story, and how those events play out – and what they reveal about him and the other characters – makes up the meat of this narrative.The first such event, the death of his son, happens in the prologue and serves simply as set up to the real story: 15 years later, Wellington is a successful executive at a biotech firm on the verge of a blockbuster IPO, married to the sexpot daughter of the firm’s founder and devoted to chasing the dollar. Despite this, Adam Rexsen, the benevolent founder of the firm, believes there’s goodness running strongly in Wellington, and urges him to find a purpose in life beyond money as they fly back from a business meeting. There’s little time for Wellington to ponder this, however, as an onboard emergency leads to a plane crash, an event he miraculously survives, only to be drawn into a nightmarish world where he’s framed for murder, virtually everyone he thought he knew is plotting against him and the miracle product he thought would turn the company into a giant turns out to have a ghastly side effect. Throw in a covert hit team, a chauffeur whose skills extend way beyond parallel parking and a lovely researcher, and readers are off to the races.
There’s a lot to like in Hadden’s narrative, not the least of which is the sheer efficiency with which he gets all the pieces to mesh together. Despite an excess of chapters – over 50 in a book of less than 300 pages – the scenes never feel abbreviated; every piece flows together, making scene transitions smooth rather than the staccato pace one might expect. Hadden grounds his settings in copious detail, which at times flirts with becoming too much detail (particularly with regard to luxury items and weapons), but the overall effect is to give the reader a very specific feel and environment. None of the characters are particularly developed – and some of them, such as Wellington’s first wife, disappear with little or no explanation – but they all have distinctive voices, and Hadden uses them adroitly to keep the story in motion.
If there is a flaw in the narrative, it’s that – perhaps unfairly – things work too well. There aren’t any surprises or quirks in the machinery of Hadden’s novel, save one: for a novel that features a good deal of sex (mostly implied) and violence, it has an astonishingly strong and circumspect undercurrent of faith anchoring the text. Beyond the questions of purpose that thematically pin the book, both Wellington and Clarke turn to faith in ways that illustrate without proselytizing. That ability to get the point across without hectoring is rare, and indicates a subtlety that’s almost out of place, given the nominal conventions and genre of the book. Outside of that treatment, however, the novel runs competently and smoothly, but without making waves or standing out. As an afternoon’s entertainment, Hadden’s novel fits the bill nicely, but fans of stories that linger in the mind long after the last page is turned may want something different.
