BOOK DESCRIPTION
London-based financial journalist Spencer Beck is obsessed with billionaire biotech prodigy, Adam Reid, orphaned in his mid-teens when his parents died in a tragic murder-suicide in New York City. A shadowy informant with MI5 connections promises Beck unfettered access to the mysterious Reid and introduces him to Daniel Flanagan, a retired Big Apple detective who investigated the deaths of Adam’s mother and father. Spencer’s initial scepticism, fed by the suspicions of the former police officer, turns to excitement when Reid reveals the truth about himself and his altruistic ambitions to protect society from a deadly virus with a powerful vaccine he’s developed. But when Beck’s entire world starts to implode, he discovers Reid harbours a vendetta that, left unchecked, threatens not only his survival but that of an entire species.
A lesson from history
Albert Camus wrote in The Plague that a pestilence is likely to outstay its welcome. It will last longer that we would like it to and, unfortunately, it will last longer than we can remain vigilant.
Lockdowns will be less strictly policed as the months drag. Corners will be cut and, one way or another, cures and vaccines will be found even if, as in former times, they involve burning witches and throwing black cats down wells.
Today, science has been summoned to the rescue.
The Pfizer vaccine may be a gamechanger and there are others behind it in the race to return us to normality. Astra Zeneca’s vaccine could be similarly efficacious and a vaccine coming out of Russia, the oddly named Sputnik V, claims 92% efficacy.
But a Chinese vaccine being developed by Sinovac has been suspended due to a ‘severe adverse incident’ involving one or more volunteers.
There could be other ‘accidents’ and where would we turn if someone, let’s say a billionaire genius with a grudge, a big secret and a frightening ambition, were to deliberately tamper with the science…
Always Adam explores just such a possibility. Adam is a biotech billionaire. A genius with a past, a very distant past and the deepest of secrets.
He is widely revered. His critics are shouted down but he is not who or what he first appears to be.
However, in the heat and smoke of the battle against a virus that he and very few others have foreseen, he intends to make himself invaluable to humanity – and he will extract a very high price indeed.
About Mark Brumby:
A Cambridge economics graduate, Mark Brumby is a vastly experience financial analyst and owner of Langton Capital, an FCA-regulated advisory company specialising in the hospitality and leisure sectors. He is a partner in the Imbiba Partnership, which invests in pub, bar and restaurant start-ups.
Mark wrote Always Adam (originally published as Payback) in 2013. Boomslang is republishing the book in November 2020 as it deserves to reach a wider audience in the current pandemic climate.
“Covid-19 has brought home not just the fragility of human life but the power of vaccines. Very shortly, we hope, a vaccine could physically alter the cell structure of three or four billion people and protect the same number again via herd immunity. But what if a vaccine were misused?”
“In some ways the world has changed but in many ways it remains the same. The ‘facts’ re our existence have not and will not change. But the events of the last few months have brought home the truth that we are only animals and that we are almost as much at risk from novel diseases with high R ratios and significant mortality rates as we have ever been.”
“I tried to take a step back and look at how we got here & what we’re doing. That sounds deep but some 99% of species that have ever existed are extinct, so what makes us so special?”
“Indeed, we’ve very nearly joined the list of ‘used-to-be’ species list on several occasions. Anthropologists believe that the human population at times in our history fell to a total of less than 10,000 individuals worldwide. You could fit them all in a small football ground and it’s more than a 99.99% reduction on the number of people around today.”
“As an author, Covid-19 has moved the goalposts a little. It has made the unbelievable a little more believable. A pandemic, until December of last year was, literally, a fiction.”
Mark Brumby is married with five children and commutes between London and his home in York.
Social Media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdamGregorReid
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ASpencerBeck
PUBLICATION DATE: 30th November 2020
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