In The Silk Code, Phil D’Amato, a New York forensic detective, encounters a mystery in Amish country. A cult with expertise in genetics has bred fireflies to give off heat as well as light. With a bit of tinkering, the bugs can become murder weapons, which is only the beginning of the mystery. The plot has convolutions involving Jacquard Looms and hominid DNA. Such speculative science required considerable suspension of disbelief. But I managed. ( )

Author's guest post at my blog:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2021/10/foodfic-please-welcome-paul-levinson.html

This starts off as a police procedural. It ends as a police procedural. Along the way, there's this section set in the eighth century, without which it would still be science fiction, but you could still shelve it in the mystery section and probably no one would claim they'd been the victim of false advertising.

And I cannot dissuade myself from the notion that that eighth-century section, for all its inherent attractions as a section of a different novel entirely, in this novel is simply an unusually intrusive info dump. You couldn't cut it out without working that information into the book some other way, but this would be a stronger book if Levinson had taken the time and trouble to do that.

Nevertheless, this is still an interesting and enjoyable book. Dr. Phil D'Amato, a NYC forensic detective, goes to visit a friend, another forensic scientist, in Lancaster, PA. He has barely arrived--not taken his bags out of his car--when the friend, Mo Buhler, drags him off to go visit an Amish friend, saying that he's discovered some "really interesting techniques." When they get there, they learn that the Amish friend has died suddenly, of a heart attack, and a brother Mo hasn't met before is guarding the homestead quite aggressively. They depart rapidly, and Mo, in an apparent state of alarm, announces that instead of going home, they need to go to Philadelphia. And then he starts to show signs of an allergic reaction, and with not more than two hours of Phil's arrival in Lancaster, Mo Buhler is dead. Having absolutely zero evidence that Mo died of anything other than natural causes, Phil launches his own investigation--and discovers that the "interesting techniques" Mo had mentioned to him include such useful things as breeding fireflies to live in lamps and have a flicker rate that allows them to provide useful amounts of light, and such fun stuff as catalysts to produce fatal allergies in previously unaffected people, and fireflies that, under the right circumstances (including swarms of sufficient size) produce enough heat to start fires that burn down the houses and barns of the inconvenient.

So, who killed Mo's friend Joseph, not to mention Mo? Well. Not the Amish. A group that looks and acts outwardly a lot like the Amish, a group often mistaken by outsiders for Amish. But the Amish aren't about to explain; when Phil says, "Let me get them shut down", they say, "Like you've shut down your own criminals?" They insist these people are their problem and they'll deal with it.

So, what does all this have to do with the three Neanderthal corpses that suddenly appear, in New York, and Toronto, and London? Or the death of the Toronto medical examiner, of a heart attack, right afterwards? And the rather strange janitor, who might have been the New York Neanderthal corpse, but turns up a week or two later, with a perfectly plausible story about having been on vacation? Why does the janitor carry a silk handerchief, and why was an apparently identical silk handkerchief found on the NY Neanderthal corpse? And why, exactly, does one of Phil's New York colleagues, the one who examined the New York Neaderthal corpse, suddenly become very ill, and die, weeks later--after, as it turns out, his wife sends their silk sheets out to be cleaned?

Phil and his colleagues and friends start chasing themselves, each other, and the paucity of real clues in circles, unable to trust each other because it's all too painfully clear that someone on the inside of the investigation is leaking information even before Phil and the others are sure there's a crime to investigate. When one of those people is killed in circumstances that superficially suggest a motive for Phil to have done it, things get really scary.

Not a perfect book, by any means, but very interesting, and enjoyable. ( )

While I liked the story and the characters, I felt disoriented when I was reading this. The first part is alright, the second one changes time and appears completely unrelated to the first part, to the point I though it was a short story book and not a novel. Then the third part takes us back to present day and about the middle of it there are some references to the second part. I think if after that references are done we are introduced to the second part story it would have made complete sense, but as it is, it sounds disorganized, and it's completely unconnected until the third part kicks into high gear.

But as I said, the stories are good and the characters feel right, and it was entertaining enough to win 3 stars. ( )

After an argument with myself, I am settling on a 3* review. I found this book to be exceedingly frustrating. I just felt like it could have been so much better.

The story is about a genetic virus on a DNA level and it discusses DNA based technology used by the Amish. I found the concept fascinating. I did struggle to find a character to connect with emotionally, but settled on Phil and Jenna's relationship to relate with.

Phil is a forensic examiner. He and his friends/cohorts/colleagues discover bodies that carbon date 30,000 years in the past. Deaths ensue, bodies get lost, and Phil must get to the bottom of it before humanity is wiped out. OK, maybe not quite that desperate, but that is the idea.

It is essentially an old time mystery story (think Raymond Chandler et al.) with some science fiction type ideas thrown in. Both parts are well thought out and written. I found the genetic manipulation that Mr. Levinson describes absolutely fascinating and it is this concept that sets the book apart. These parts (1,3 and 4) of the story are frantic and fast paced and make an excellent story. Of at least 4 stars.

But, there is another part to the story. The second part. The Tocharian Chariot. In this part, we are sent far to the past to take a journey with Gwellyn as he travels the known world to find the history of the 'singers' while having flings with almost every female whose path he crosses. This part is written in a totally different voice and felt like a completely different style. In fact, I double checked to make sure the book was not actually a short story collection. This part was painful. Had the first part not so engrossed me, I surely would have put this book aside. But, I really wanted to finish the mystery. I could have skipped this part, but I feared I would miss something important. This part would have rated 1*. But, since there were 3 parts with more stars - I settled on 3 for the book.

Even though the conclusion of the book does go back to this part, I do not actually feel like I would have missed anything had I skipped it. I would have just felt like I cheated. Which was beyond me. So, I read it.

Also, this book was written in 1999. This matters. There is much talk about cell phones and call costs - all of which are very different today. So, to maintain some semblance of reality, it helps to remember the writing date.

I would recommend the book with a couple caveats. 1) I would simply skip the second part. I think I would have loved the book without this part and don't think I would have missed much. 2) the writing style is a bit choppy (but that may have been my version), but the story itself is intriguing. ( )