DARK INHERITANCE

Scientists and simians in a global thriller

By J.A. Hitchcock     October 11, 2002

This book reminded me of an awful lot of CONGO by Michael Crichton, with grisly gorilla attacks on humans, missing people, a female sign-language capable simian, and a man and woman who find out what's going on. Hmm. But there the similarity ends, and truthfully, I think this book is written ten times better than CONGO.

There are several chimpanzees being raised in human families around the world, but these chimps are smarter than the average bear, if you get my drift. They are in, fact, almost human themselves. One "father" is Jim Dutton, who has a female bonobo ape named Umber, as well as his daughter, Brett. Brett and Umber are like two peas in a pod and communicate mainly via sign language, but also through a special keyboard that Umber types into. Then her words are spoken out loud by a synthesized voice. They've grown up together and at age 13, they're both typical teenage "girls" with crushes on the latest boytoys in Hollywood, clothes, etc.

The pharmaceutical corporation who placed Umber with Dutton, Smyth-Archer, has checked in on Umber's progress over the years, as part of the agreement. Everything seems to be okay until Dutton contacts a friend at the University of Arizona, Tory, and she comes to his home in Colorado to hear his concerns. It seems that Dutton is suspicious of Umber's intelligence and has asked Tory to run some tests to see if he is crazy or has a right to be suspicious. He's been faking his reports to Smyth-Archer, making Umber less intelligent than she really was. But he's right; something is odd. Tory begins to check into some things and Dutton worries he'll lose Umber.

In the meantime, in equatorial Africa, things have gone to hell in the compound that Smyth-Archer runs there. The apes are separated on islands surrounded by water and accessible only by a drawbridge opened with a special key. Some poachers sneak in one night, thinking these apes are just typical apes and something easy for them to kill and sell in the village; they thought wrong. The apes fight back, literally, and soon all the poachers are dead except for one who manages to swim away, badly injured. He soon becomes the village drunk, babbling about a blue-eyed monkey. Meanwhile, some of workers are disappearing at the compound. It's seems this blue-eyed monkey, although considered a reject by Smyth-Archer, is still very human and upset that his mate was killed by the poachers. He wants revenge against the humans. Now that he knows they are easy to kill, he begins the hunt.

Back in the USA, things start going to hell as well. Dutton's ex-wife is a reporter for a national news station and she's assigned a story that has to do with. . .yep, those monkeys from Smyth-Archer. Before you know it, she's pretty much figured out what's been going on, discovers her ex has one of the experimental monkeys and decides to investigate some more, but not let him know she knows. Before you know it, everyone ends up in Africa, although they don't know the other is there - Dutton, his daughter and Umber have been forced by Smyth-Archer to move to the compound; his ex-wife and her camera crew have barged in. The people at Smyth-Archer are trying to hide the fact that their workers are disappearing - and that's just halfway through the book.

The authors are scientists themselves, but don't get too technical in this thriller. They explain everything in easy to understand language that fits in with the storytelling. The characters are believable - yes, even Umber - and the ending is satisfying, but leaves room for a possible sequel.