Perfect Killer

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When a prominent Mississippi civil rights attorney asks renowned neurosurgeon Bradford Stone to help her save the life of a white racist condemned to death for the cold case murder of a black man, he has no idea that he is about to be dragged through a deadly past he thought he had escaped once and for all. Stone, the disinherited scion of a powerful Delta Planter family, has no premonition that he is about live through the hellish proof of William Faulkner's axiom that, "The past isn't over; it's not even past." Set mostly in Mississippi - primarily the Delta region where the real-life gothic exceeds the most outlandish Flannery O'Connor story - Perfect Killer tells the story of a future which can never break free of the past. The mystery is centered in the Mississippi Delta in a top-secret military project begun decades ago in a facility once housing German POWs. The program, Project Enduring Valor, is designed to create the ultimate human killing machine. For over seventy years, has sought the Holy Grail of combat medicine: a chemical compound that would turn ordinary soldiers into weapons of mass destruction, the Perfect Killers. Now, after decades of covert trial and error which have resulted in troubling side effects such as the My Lai massacre, Enduring Valor is ready to be implemented on a massive scale--despite a few troubling side-effects. Before he knows it, Stone himself in the sights of the Project's director, a retired general and war hero turned presidential candidate. To get back his life, and expose the truth, Stone must struggle with the South's racist legacy, the demons of his past and penetrate the very heart of the lethal conspiracy.From Publishers WeeklyNot many thrillers end with a bibliography of several dozen actual nonfiction books, but Perdue's prodigious and intriguing new novel (after 2004's Slatewiper) has one—plus appendixes that are probably fiction because they include quotes from the novel's star players. Dr. Bradford Stone, "legendary Marine recon operative turned healer and scientist," makes it his business to find out who's behind a massive secret plan to turn the drug Xantaeus loose on a reduced but much more effective army in places like Iraq—especially after the love of his life, a black activist in the Mississippi Delta country, is killed by a female sniper involved in the conspiracy. Stone and the murdered activist's daughter are credible characters; the plot's premise stands up to scrutiny; and Perdue brings the Delta geography to vivid life. Even though the writing occasionally slips into some awkward phrasing ("Gabriel had paid scant attention and given no real thought to those critics, preferring to believe the day of the nondepleting neurotrop would never come"), this is an exciting novel. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review"Packed with action and controversy, Perfect Killer is that rarity among thrillers-it sets your pulse racing while it makes you think."--David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of The Brotherhood of the Rose on Perfect Killer