The Kill Cell

by Alasdair Duncan

Financial thrillers tend to place the blame on a single rotten apple. What if itÕs the whole barrel thatÕs rotten with only a few sound fruit in it? The Kill Cell is set in an uncertain near future. The North Atlantic Drift has switched off plunging the UK into a mini ice age every winter; fertility has become a problem and people, plants and animals can no longer reproduce without scientific help. Technology labs producing everything from human embryos to butterflies are the new wave industries. Governments now order their embryos in bulk giving rise to a burgeoning futures market in the City, where traders stand to lose or make millions betting on the success or otherwise of these breeding programmes. The first financial techno thriller? MaybeÉ

382 pages, Paperback

Published August 6, 2007

About the author

Alasdair Duncan (born 22 November 1982) is an author and journalist, based in Brisbane on the east coast of Australia. He is a section editor at weekly music magazine Rave, where he has published interviews with Cut Copy, LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A. and Soulwax, and is a frequent contributor to The ABC's Unleashed blog.

Duncan is perhaps most notable as the author of the novel "Sushi Central", which was published under the title "Dance, Recover, Repeat" in the United States by MTV Books. His second novel, Metro, was published in Australia in August 2006, and was released in the UK by Burning House Books in February 2008.

At age 16, Duncan's first short novel, "Rose and Charcoal," was shortlisted for the Penguin/Qantas/Somerset Award for School-Age Writers. He later won the State Library of Queensland's Young Writers Award with an entry called "Love".

In 2008 he was a judge for the State Library of Queensland's Young Writers Award.