I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. - J. Robert Oppenheimer

Biggest mistake in history made by people who didn’t think. – Charlie Chan

A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace. - Kwame Nkrumah

hu-man-i-ty (noun): the qualities or characteristics considered as a whole to be characteristic of human beings

Hum. What characteristics are human, really? Well, for all our vaunted intelligence, the way we utilize said is, taken overall, deeply mindless and deeply uncaring of anything other than ourselves, and the immediate rewards of whatever new and unusual methodology we find for destroying others – and thereby destroying everything.

Maintain the balance of power, they said. It was safe. There would be no danger for 500 or 1000 years.

The French say that their nuclear tests on the Island of Moruroa, in the Tuomotus, are ‘safe’. But now, the Ocean Mother has come ashore, floating free in the Kalalono Bay. All aboard are dead. But why? And how? And how is it connected to the nuclear tests on the Island of Moruroa?

Politics. Intelligence (or what passes for it). Biology, physics, and a heaping helping of Polynesian and Haitian religion builds Venom: A Thriller in Paradise builds a sharp and layered vision of the horrors of the creativity of the human mind – and the depth the human political psyche will go to in order to cover their political asses.

Tutti venini sono freddi: “All poisons are cold.” – Brunetto Latini

Many are dead. Many more are endangered. As biologist Dr. Chazz Koenig and Lt. Cobb Takamura struggle to find the method of death of the ship’s crew, a serial killer rampages across Hawaii, his reasons unclear, his ties to the original murders both twisted and indistinct. And what must be done is oftentimes even more horrific than what has gone before. And what has gone before may be only the beginning.

A great story, a thoughtful and modern book of environmental terrorism which runs in the other direction – the terrorism of political control and political games grown out of control, of death and destruction and fear, and the waste of the world.

Oh, and did I say, this is a really GREAT story?