So this was the first novel of Peter James I took on reading. I must confess that this time it wasn’t on any of the lists for review, I just picked it up at the main station on a rainy afternoon a while ago, because I just needed something that would entertain me while I was trapped in the building (because of the rain and because I hate umbrellas). If a book’s cover tells me that there are „11 million copies sold“ by the day it was designed, it is either mass reader’s trash or a really good book. So this would be the first book of Peter James I picked up, everyone else might know him for ages, I guess. After all he has had a few best sellers since he started publishing in the 80s, most of them in police work based thrillers.

So here’s the story of “Perfect People”: An enthusiastic couple, John and Naomi Klaesson, are calling up Dr. Dettore for help in receiving a baby. Ever since their son died on a rare genetic disease, they couldn’t get any children and Dr. Dettore is well known for the miracles of genetics he can perform, creating healthy children with some positive adjustments made. To cut short, he is building „designer babies“ for his wealthy clients. John and Naomi pick some extras from a list. They want an extreme healthy strong child, that is ahead of his age, smart and fast learning.

But the „order“ doesn’t go well from the beginning. They discover they will have twins, soon. Luke and Phoebe seem different from the beginning, they only communicate with each other in their beds and seem to reject their parents. At age 1 they start talking in a language, Naomi and John can’t decode, at age 2 they have to get their own computers after they hacked theirs. But not only the children are a problem to their family peace, they get followed by a sect calling themselves „The Disciples of the Third Millenium“ trying to kill every designer baby created by Dr Dettore who also got killed in an „accident“ off the coast years ago.

So while their highly intelligent 3 year old twins behave like teenagers and educate themselves online about medicine and physics, John and Naomi have to constantly fear for their own lives. And then one day the children just disappear. Who would have been intelligent and convincing enough to have lured them out of their safe haven?

Let me first comment on the form of the book. That concept of having 2 or 3 pages long chapters in a book of 500+ pages. It doesn’t work for me. It may work for people who are that busy that they can only read 2 pages before they have to jump to their next assignments, for me it was a struggle to follow those short chapters throughout the story. But now for the content.

Peter James, in this novel, writes like a young Michael Crichton which is a good thing. This is basically a science related thriller. It is not really science fiction, it is not really deeply scientific, it is not just crime, yes let’s stick with science related thriller. There isn’t much action, but there also isn’t much genetics. But it is quite entertaining to read and grants a few hours of reading fun. What kind of spoiled it for me was the very end of the novel. But maybe that’s just me, that I expected something more exciting after the last quarter of the book. However the novel itself is quite catchy and diverting. I would recommend it exactly what I bought it for: A rainy afternoon, you want to spend reading an entertaining thriller.

Peter James : Perfect People , Pan books, 2012 , $10,99
Deutsche Ausgabe vermutlich 2013