Professor Ted Bartholomew is well respected by his students and leads a fairly mild life. But tonight as he leaves his late night university class proceeding to his car he is stopped by a man. The professor is forced at gunpoint to drive out into the country. Stopped next to an experimental crop of Soy Beans Professor Ted is given a little bit of a head start. The man aims a mean looking crossbow ant Ted and tells him he has until the count of ten so he better run.
Ted stumbles, running, falling, snagging himself as he clambers through the barbed wire fence and reaches about the middle of the field before being slammed in the back by a crossbow bolt. His attacker roughly turns him over and tries to pull the bolt out of his body but the barbs are spread out and stuck so he just leaves it. Ted’s final memory is of the man pouring a can of gasoline onto his chest and dropping a match. He quickly dies.
Grace Descanso is a crime scene technician. She used to be a physician but something in her past caused her a deep psychological trauma and she cannot practice medicine. She is on vacation with her daughter and has just met up with her estranged husband. She had told her daughter that her father was dead and now has to face not only the hurt husband but the hurt daughter who can’t understand why mommy lied. She had run away but running seems to be not an option any longer. Before she can even begin to work anything out she is called by her uncle who is an FBI agent and forced to leave her vacation in the Bahamas to return to the deadly events back in California. Professor Ted had left a short Morse code message on his cell phone giving only Grace Descanso’s name. It turns out that the Professor had attended a lecture given by Grace that concerned gene modification in plants and animals. But how can that tie in?
There is a big world agricultural conference being held that is under massive attack by environmental groups. The United States is attempting to provide Soy Bean seed to developing nations that has been genetically modified to resist drought. Environmental activists are convinced that the genetically modified crops are causing deadly diseases that the government is ignoring for the sole purpose of making money from the poor of the world. Deep within the environmental group’s thousands is an extremist organization believing that the only way to stop the distribution of these kinds of crops is to kill those who want to distribute.
Grace and her FBI uncle discover that the Soy seed has been contaminated by a rust that could only have been brought in from far away. Then after a lot of questioning of other students and professors Grace finds that the seed has also been genetically modified further with a human gene that will cause Caucasian pregnant women to abort in their first trimester of pregnancy. The potential of such a racially modified crop if it were to spread very wide would be devastating. And Grace discovered the group has a very clever plan that would most effectively distribute it all over the world.
Ms. Smith’s story spirals to a concluding set of chapters that are very exciting. You will be compelled to sit in your easy chair late into the night to find out how it all ends. “Out at Night” is riveting and earns a 9 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
