Peter James’s clever page-turner Perfect People focuses not on the past but risks for the future. A wealthy professional couple, Swede John and Briton Naomi, are grieving over the death of their only son from a rare hereditary disease that is the product of a rare interaction between their gene pools. Understandably, they want to try controversial new treatment that will ensure that any future children do not run the same risk. But their optimism is challenged when the eccentric doctor who treats them dies in a suspicious helicopter crash, they find that Naomi is carrying twins and a fundamentalist group threatens to kill their children as “spawn of Satan”.
Yet none of that is as scary as the reality, when the children are born with abilities beyond their parents’ dreams, which could make them a new breed of humanity.