America's leaders and pundits have long warned that China is the West's greatest threat to its democratic and economic survival. This is the central theme upon which Barry Libin's newest novel, The Red Mutation, is based.
The Red Mutation is a geopolitical thriller that discloses the Chinese use of bioterror to achieve world domination. When the head of China's Hunan Institute of Virology bioengineers a Covid-like virus mutation that kills an entire village with a single nanoparticle, China's leaders believe they have created the perfect assassin: hidden, silent, and deadly. Indeed, the most powerful weapon ever devised by man.
The name of the mutation is Thanatos, the Greek god of merciless death, and it is adopted as the central tenet of China's New Defense Policy. But although Chinese scientists have proved Thanatos absolutely deadly, they have not yet found the antidote to control it, without which China's policy cannot succeed.
Dr. Jeffrey Moss of the NYPD believes there is a brilliant young scientist working at the Brookfield Institute in New York that is close to finding the antidote but has disappeared. From the streets of Shanghai to the avenues of Manhattan, Moss and his colleagues must find the young man and prevent Chinese agents from kidnapping him, allowing the antidote from falling into the wrong hands. If Moss is unable to accomplish his mission in time, then Thanatos will be released, and the world will fall hostage to its enemies.
