Product Description

Through her research on twins and the genetic components of aggression, scientist Jeannie Ferrami makes a startling discovery. Using a restricted FBI database, she finds two young men who appear to be identical twins: Steve, a law student, and Dennis: a convicted murderer. Yet they were born on different days, to different mothers, in hospitals hundreds of miles apart.

As Ferrami delves into their backgrounds, she unwittingly locks horns with some of the most powerful forces in America, including the university where she works, The New York Times, even the Pentagon.

What secret has Ferrami uncovered? Can she trust her boss and mentor, or must she put her life in the hands of Steve Logan, the twin she finds herself falling in love with--even though he's surrounded by intrigue and suspicion? But one thing is certain: There are those who will stop at nothing to keep their chilling conspiracy in the shadows. . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60450 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-29
• Released on: 1997-06-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.com Review
Identical twins have been the storyteller's friend since Roman times. Master-scribbler Ken Follett does the arrangement one better in his latest yarn, The Third Twin. The heroine, Jeannie Ferrami, is a young professor at Jones Falls University (JFU)(think Johns Hopkins) who is investigating the balance of nature versus nurture in criminality. Driven by a secret from her past, Dr. Ferrami is overjoyed to find that a straight-arrow law student at JFU has an identical twin (raised separately) who is a convicted rapist. She is not overjoyed, however, when that man is arrested for raping her best friend. Surely Mr. Perfect couldn't be guilty--enter the evil masterminds, three Nixon-era compadres who have been toiling for decades to make America safe for racial purity. It's bad enough that one of the conspirators is Dr. Ferrami's boss, but another is eyeing the Oval Office. The young professor has stumbled onto a secret that could ruin them all, and it's only a matter of pages before bad things start to happen to the pair. The shortest distance between two points is a Follett plot. Look elsewhere for subtlety; entertainment, we got.

From Publishers Weekly
After three consecutive historical sagas (A Dangerous Fortune, etc.), Follett returns to the threshold of the 21st century with a provocative, well-paced and sensational biotech-thriller about the genetic manipulation of human embryos. Striving to prove that offspring genetically predisposed toward aggression can learn to sublimate their combative nature through childhood conditioning by socially responsible parents, a feisty and brilliant young university researcher, Jeannie Ferrami, develops software to identify identical twins who have been reared apart. When she stumbles across what seems to be an impossibility?identical twins born to different mothers at separate locations on different dates, Jeannie runs into serious trouble. Pitted against her is, foremost, her own faculty mentor, Berrington Jones, a world-renowned authority on biotechnical engineering. In devious partnership with another scientist and a bigoted U.S. senator with presidential aspirations, Jones is co-founder of Genetico, a small company that pioneered biogenetic research. The trio is now in the final stages of a lucrative friendly buyout by a corporate giant?and they don't take kindly to Jeannie's diggings. Multiples created by genetic manipulation aren't new to thrillers (e.g., Ira Levin's The Boys from Brazil), but Follett puts a clever spin on the concept. And despite entwining outlandish plot strands of biotechnical skullduggery, a neo-Nazi candidate for president, academic politics and corporate greed with a steamy romance between Jeannie and one of the twins, the novel shines with the authenticity that's Follett's trademark as it explores the Internet and the mind-boggling data banks of personal statistics maintained by insurance empires, the Pentagon and the FBI. This isn't Follett's most sophisticated novel?it's heavy on the melodrama and on sexual violence?but its wicked narrative energy and catchy theme will likely propel it quickly onto the charts. Major ad/promo; simultaneous Random House audio and large-print editions; author satellite tour;
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Cloning and multiplying have seized the collective creative imagination, and lately there seems to be a double behind every lamp-post. Follett, whose Key to Rebecca (1980) ranks among the best thrillers ever, now weighs in with a saga that resounds with contemporary themes, tremendous characters, and a plot that puts high energy back into the doppelganger tradition. With a multiplier effect that registers booming numbers on the Richter scale of thrillers, Follett creates a young scientist who starts out to prove a point in the hoary debate of nurture vs. nature. As her computer program shuffles through huge databases tracking down twins raised apart, she stumbles on a secret cloning experiment that has let loose eight "twins," three of whom become intimate subjects in her study. The patina of glamorous biotech science is vigorously burnished by the oils of lust for sex and power. This is a surefire multiple-copy purchase for most libraries.?Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Jeannie, lose the nose ring!
On one level I enjoyed this book. It was a fun read as a mystery-thriller. But I agree with a number of the criticisms voiced already. I didn't like the main character Jeannie & I didn't like the gratuitous political moralizing where all the bad guys were conservatives. If you want to make your bad guys evil for their attempts at genetic manipulation & white supremacist rantings, fine, but don't throw in that they're against gun control & against welfare! And, Jeannie, I just couldn't warm up to. I know Follett likes his heroines feisty, which is fine, but Jeannie was just too counter-cultural for me. The swearing, the free & easy sex life, the "smoking a little weed," and, ugh, the nose ring. Is that really necessary? I also agree that Follett's presentation of academic life is unrealistic. (I am an academic.) Follett's books with a World War II theme are much better.

JUMPING GEMINI!
"The Third Twin" is the first Ken Follett novel that I have read, and I must say that I am definitely going to try some of his earlier works, even though I Know this book is different from some of his earlier efforts. However, I really liked this book; it moves well; it has likeable heroes and nasty villains. It addresses the question of nature vs. nurture, and Follett obviously believes that no matter what's in your genes, it's important as to what kind of environment you are raised in.

Jeannie Ferrami, the heroine, is a strong, determined character, and I liked her persistence in proving not only that her scientific studies are correct, but that the conspiracy she has uncovered needs to be addressed! I wish sometimes other reviewers wouldn't...mention some of the plot's "surprises," such as the number of clones, but even though in reading the reviews, you get advance information, don't let that spoil the finesse in which Follette weaves his tale.

I liked Steve Logan, too. He comes across as a sincere, honest type of guy, who wants to be a good lawyer and is caught in the unbelievable maze of discovering he is a clone.

The novel opens briskly with one of the evil clones rape of Jeanne's best friend, and we get involved with the confusion when Steve enters Jeannie's life.

The villains are all particularly vile, but Berrington Jones is the worst. Such a pompous, self-serving fool.

Fortunately, after our heroes go through countless setbacks, the ending is justifiable and the epilogue at the end is particularly touching.

A great book; I really enjoyed it for it's entertainment value!

Save your money.
I haven't read anything else by Ken Follett, and based on this book, I don't plan to. The story line was unbelievable, the plot full of holes, and I didn't care about the characters. Don't waste your money buying this book.