Sam O'Brien

The Ruthless Gene Sam O'Brien

Horse racing meets Michael Crichton in this tense thriller about genetics and epigenetics - human and equine.

In 2015, renowned equine geneticist Fiona Buckley's research lab was robbed, set ablaze and her security guard murdered. Just as her husband, paralysed former champion jockey Johnny Buckley, was dying from a particularly savage and mystifying form of cancer.

Fiona doesn't see the link, despite her husband's deathbed warnings. Only Johnny knows that his death is the culmination of a chain of events which started with an outsider winning the Irish Derby in 2005, the very race which put Johnny in a wheelchair.

In the high-stakes game of breeding and selling elite racehorses worth millions, cheating, intimidation and murder are acceptable for those desperate to gain an advantage.

What if Fiona's work is a prelude to a revolution in genetic science? And what was her husband actually doing while he worked for a horsefeed company?

She must be careful who she trusts and revisit her husband's troubled life to untangle the web of events, motives and genetic discoveries that affect not just racehorses, but every person on the planet.