The first in the Asher & Asher series of international criminal investigations."A compelling plot and poignant rants about the inadequacy of democratic institutions and ...the global establishment."Mark Dobson, a partner in London-based international commercial crime investigstors, Asher & Asher is given an unusually vague remit from a new client, an American biotechnology company, to investigate the theft of valuable research material. Motivated largely by a private desire to see a Thai girlfriend, Anna, he travels to Bangkok for an infectious diseases conference and discovers that several virologists have also disappeared. One of them, David Solomon, is known for extreme views on the need for direct action to reduce the world's human population.What he uncovers is a sinister plot to deliberately spread a deadly new virus, the Malthus A virus, specifically created by Solomon. But Solomon needs funds and help to spread it.With sporadic outbreaks of the disease already in Thailand, Nigeria and Kenya, Dobson finds two other characters - Doctor Larry Brown, an American doctor working at the USA Embassy in Nigeria, and Kevin Parker, an academic and expert on the history and economics of population control - have also arrived at similar conclusions but from different angles.But with his cover blown by the murder of another colleague, the charismatic Kenyan detective Jimmy Banda, and with increasing fears that the virus is about to be released, Dobson and the others face another problem: persuading the World Health Organisation, UK and USA politicians and the international agencies responsible for bioterrorism and commercial crime, to believe them and respond in time.