A stunning post-millennial thriller from the author of PUPPETS. Genius husband-and-wife team Ryan and Jessamine McCloud are founders of Genesis, an unorthodox problem-solving think tank. Commissioned by a billionaire corporate chief to study the causes of the rising tide of global violence and social unrest, they begin to fear that a kind of disease is behind it all. They christen this the Babel Effect. Could there be a biomedical explanation for a kind of global insanity? Or is something else at the root of the problem? The investigation is brutally interrupted when Jessamine is kidnapped, and in the face of opposition from sinister and powerful organisations, Ryan McCloud grows increasingly desperate to find a way of halting the contagion of the Babel Effect, before it's too late for his family - before it's too late for mankind.