Third Twin: A Novel of Suspense

The Third Twin is a 1996 techno thriller by Ken Follett. It’s like a ride in a literary time machine set to the years James Bond movies ruled the box office and John MacDonald’s PI Travis McGee captured readers’ hearts and minds, where cops interviewing rape victims are accusatory, rapists openly visualize the crimes they’re about to commit while savoring the details, male and female characters have a robust sex drive that colors their everyday lives, and concerns about medical privacy and genetic engineering shadow the future, as AI does today.All the main villains appear to be political conservatives; Follett describes the ringleader: “Berrington sat at his desk, breathing hard. He had a corner office, but otherwise his room was monastic: plastic tiled floor, white walls, utilitarian file cabinets, cheap bookshelves. Academics were not expected to have lavish offices. The screensaver on his computer showed a slowly revolving strand of DNA twisted in the famous double-helix shape. Over the desk were photographs of himself with Geraldo Rivera, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh.”Berrington and his two cronies have engineered the impending sale of their small biotech company for a big payoff they’ll split three ways. The Senator intends to make a run for the presidency fueled by his payoff, installing Berrington as Surgeon General, and if he wins, they will have carte blanch to engage in all kinds of genetic research to further their nefarious purposes.The monkey wrench in the works is a female PhD researcher hired by the bad guys who discovers some strange anomalies in her genetic study that raise unexpected questions pointing to past unethical medical behavior, and gain her an investigative ally who becomes more personal than professional. The search for answers is difficult, leading her on a journey putting her at odds with powerful interests, could cost her everything she values, yet compels her to continue her search for the truth, culminating in an explosive press conference about the biotech company’s buyout.

I always love Follett but this is not as good in character development, relying on plot twists. And the ending is a sudden rush like he was bored with the book by then.

(spoiler) I have to say that I figured out there were going to be more than three, not twins at all but clones, fairly early; but, it was still cleverly plotted and well written enough to keep me engaged to the end.

The idea of cloned humans is a scary but fascinating. I found this book has lots of great plot twists. I highly recommend it.

I needed a little break from some heavy reading and this fit the bill. Compelling story of scary scientific possibilities that I hope will never happen. Greed, sex, and pure evil are at play here, along with a few good guys thrown into the mix. Now, I must return to Follett’s heavier historical novels.

A good thriller. Follett keeps the action going until the very end.Some of his assumptions are a little too convenient, otherwise I would post 5 stars. But overall, I really enjoyed this book.

I’ve read many Follett stories but this was the most surprising. I was engaged from the first to the last page. This was not my typical sci-fi story. But I chose it because if the author and I’m glad I did.

At times while reading this fascinating book I could not seem to turn the pages fast enough. Interesting plot twists about a scientific discovery and the twins it affected.

Started with the villain fantasising a rape, proceeds to the rape being enacted, continues with repeated sexual assaults and threats of them to women. The plot's pretty obvious but it would have been a very easy, relatively brain-free read if Follett hadn't kept putting in truly creepy unpleasant scenes like this. Bizarre that someone who created such a strong heroine in The Eye Of The Needle could relish so much rape and molestation of all the female characters here. Yuck.

I think I picked this up for £0.99p - would be annoyed with myself if I paid full price. I've read several Ken Follett books before & quite liked them. But this one was terrible. Implausible plot devices (civilian goes into Pentagon data centre & uploads their own search software), characterisation so thin it's almost one-dimensional, and worst of all a nasty undercurrent of sexual abuse & imagery which you could argue is intended to advance the plot. Except it doesn't, it just comes across like the author wants to write about women's underwear and violent fetishes a lot.I only kept reading out of boredom & morbid curiousity to see how bad it would get. One to avoid.

A departure from his better known historical epic novels such as Pillars of the Earth and The Key to Rebecca yet still a thoroughly researched and captivating read.Set in 2000 we follow Dr Jean(nie) Ferrami, a strong, determined young professor at Jones Falls University studying the premise of nature versus nurture using identical twins as her test subjects.Her boss, Professor Berrington Jones, is a major shareholder along with his closest friends, Senator Jim Proust and scientist Preston Barck, in Threeplex Inc the company funding her research. Jeannie needs to find twins who have grown up apart for her research to produce an effective result and has developed a new software program which searches databases held by health insurance companies for identical twins, who's various test results would also be identical.One of her first candidates using this software, Steve Logan, is surprised to hear that he's a twin even more so to discover that his supposed 'twin' Dennis Pinker is incarcerated for murder. How can they be twins when both his parents and Dennis's assure them otherwise?When Steve is then arrested for the rape of her colleague Lisa Hoxton things don't ring true for Jeannie at all; none of Steve's test results show him to be a psychopath while Dennis's clearly do. But Dennis hasn't been released so who did commit the rape?Furthermore the papers are calling Jeannie's software program unethical and unprofessional and the JFU are threatening to prevent her research in fear of a storm of bad publicity affecting funding. How did they even know about the software which Jeannie has kept to a very small number of her team?Is Berrington actually trying to prevent her research? Why as a leader in the field of genetics himself, and as the person who got her the grant from Threeplex Inc, would he not support her position but instead try to have her dismissed? Jeannie realises that 2 and 2 could be making rather more than the standard 4 and with everything on the line isn't going to be discouraged from finding the answers.It's a race against time to find the truth, save Jeannie's career and Steve from wrongful imprisonment.Ethical questions into the fields of human experimentation, genetics and cloning are raised and competently dealt with, alongside the difficulties that Universities face with the issues of freedom to research versus funding bribery from major companies. All in all a very thought provoking novel.

I had to stop a couple of times during this book to make double sure that this book was actually written by Ken Follett – Was this really written by the same author behind the generally fantastic Pillars of the Earth and the 20th Century trilogy? The fact that this book was written 23 years ago doesn’t excuse the shoddy writing, and the completely horrific misunderstanding of how a woman might react to the man accused of sexually assaulting her best friend. I kept hoping it would get better, but sadly it didn’t.

Was this really written by Ken Follett? Silly, far fetched plot. Lots of really quite nasty sexual violence against women. Unbelievable characters. At about 85% of the way through the book the plot descended into absolute farce. I'm annoyed I wasted the time on it. Can't believe it was written by the same author who wrote The Eye of the Needle.