Undeniable

Nolan Kilkenny Thriller #6

by Tom Grace, Christopher Lane (Reader)

Ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny receives a desperate plea for help from doctors frantic to save the life of a young boy with a deadly genetic disorder. The boy, who came to his parents through a blind adoption, has no known blood relatives. Nolan agrees to help, but as he is being prepped for surgery, the boy dies. Further genetic testing then reveals an astonishing Nolan and the boy share the same biological father. Nolan must confront his own father to find out the truth behind the discovery, and uncovers a heinous blackmail plot and desperate victims and villains. Undeniable , the sixth Nolan Kilkenny thriller from Tom Grace, takes Nolan into the brave new world of reproductive technology, where the building blocks of life are manipulated in a Petri dish, women lease their wombs like rental properties, and money trumps morality. In an age of rapid advances in human genetics, cloning and stem cell research, what seemed impossible just a few years ago is now a reality. DNA has been reduced from a miraculous molecule into a data storage device, and the information it contains is as easy to hack as any computer file. Undeniable is a novel that steps beyond the traditional parent-child relationship into a chilling new reproductive reality.

Genres: Thriller

MP3 CD

First published October 10, 2017

About the author

Tom Grace is the bestselling author of the Nolan Kilkenny series of adventure novels, and an architect in private practice. The Kilkenny novels feature Graces signature character, an ex-Navy Seal with strong ties to the Catholic Church.

In constructing his novels, Grace draws upon his intensely detail-oriented skills honed in the practice of architecture, in which he designs projects ranging from private residences to cutting-edge research facilities.

As both an author and architect, Grace lives by Mies van der Rohes famous aphorism: God is in the details. Painstaking research underpins each of his novels, creating the factual foundations that support the stories.

Tom Grace resides with his family in Michigan.

Series:
* Nolan Kilkenny Mystery

Reviews

[Kat Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

GIVEAWAY WINNER!

First book of this series I have read. Easy to follow even though I have not read the rest of the series. Great book. Catches your attention from first page and keeps you reading

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5 stars. If I was in a better mood, would I rate this one higher? Maybe.

Fast read. I read this book easily in a couple days, but didn't really enjoy it until around page 250 when a plot twist tied together the various random story lines. That is a lot of investment to get to the "good" part of the book.

This book apparently picks up immediately after the last book, which was published YEARS ago. That felt odd to me. It built off the Chinese Pope idea from the last book, which obviously didn't happen in reality, so it felt odd that that storyline was continued. You would not be able to understand a significant portion of this book, if you haven't read book #5.

I was excited to see a modern Tom Grace book after all these years and find an UPDATED photo in the jacket cover! It is no longer his old college photo. ;-) I spotted one typo towards the end of the book, but otherwise it was well written. He uses all the politically correct terms, such as "women's reproductive health" when referencing abortion. It felt very with it, but not necessary conservative.

There was one very rough spot in the treatment of women in this book. A nun undergoes a procedure to harvest her eggs for artificial reproduction. The procedure is graphically described and felt violating.

The book opens with the apparent bombing of an abortion-provider and then the bad guy begins kidnapping children. It did not seem to praise the pro-life position. I kept expecting him to bring the reader around to a more conservative understanding of the value of life. Instead, we see the main character (Nolan) lecture a seemingly faithful Hispanic Catholic grandmother, who says with certainty that her daughter's work as a surrogate mother was unnatural and a sin. The surrogate is (of-course) a spotless virgin paying her way through college. He states that "like many Catholics" he was confused about the issues of IVF/artificial insemination and debate was needed around the topic. Ughhh.

Toward the end of the book, Nolan must fight the bad guy - a random psycho stalker. He teams up with a fertility doctor (who creates babies artificially from DNA), her father (a corrupt lawyer), Peng (a Chinese CIA-like operative, whose government is trying to discredit the Pope by artificially creating an illegitimate child), an Italian mobster (who teamed up with the Chinese in their plot) and finally the faithful Roxanne Tao. Many of these characters are pointedly Catholic and talk about the importance of their Catholic faith. The characters that survive the final shootout scene essentially receive a slap on the wrist for their earlier misdeeds. The book seemingly moralizes that their actions were wrong, but understandable as we all learn about this new grey area of morality.

My side note: Catholic Church teaching is actually quite clear on the morality & ethics of reproductive issues, if you study it. One of the beauties of the Catholic Church is that you can read the Catechism and other official church documents for yourself. The Church teaches that use of IVF is immoral. This is not a grey issue, although some people try to rationalize it as one. It is a HUGE pet peeve of mine when Catholics (who often like to talk about how important their faith is) don't actually live out the Catholic faith. They look everywhere, except official Church teaching, for moral guidance and claim to be in a moral grey area when they encounter conflicting guidance.

This was a very male book. Excessively wordy physical descriptions as well as wordy technical/scientific descriptions, which I frequently skimmed. Focus on the false-paternity angle, when discussing the idea of a totally artificially created child. Limited (male) sensitivity levels shown toward sensitive topics. More action oriented than thought provoking.

In the last scene of the book, we have a beautiful scene with the Pope performing a funeral for a group of fertilized eggs inside test tubes. This was really the only time the author addresses the issue of when life begins or the inherent value of all human life (born and unborn). It was beautiful, but it felt like too little too late after 300+ pages of confusion about Catholic teaching in the area of sexual and reproductive morality. The author again seems like his hero Nolan - someone raised in the Catholic faith, with a bit of residual goodness and a lot of cultural Catholicism. But sadly, no active spiritual life and a tendency toward cafeteria Catholicism. This book was titled "Undeniable" and I expected a much stronger stand for the value of life. Highly disappointing.

[Travis Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book from Regnery Fiction. I had not read the previous books in this series, and as I have done when that was the case before, I came into this book with a slight skepticism and hope that this would be a sufficient stand alone novel. It does indeed, while giving enough hints to the back story of the previous novels to make the reader want to catch up. There is a great amount of suspense between the characters who are struggling to do what is right. Bioengineering is a touchy subject for many Americans and the author does a good job walking the line presenting both sides without being preachy on one side or the other. The only point of confusion for me was keeping the name of the elder (Sean) and junior (Nolan) Kilkenny straight, but I might not have had that problem coming into this novel if I had read the previous 5, so that is certainly no fault of the author. There is a good amount of medical and other technology that the author explains well enough so that you get the idea of what is going on without you needing a degree in some sort of science.

[Bouchra Rebiai · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a lot of similar medical thrillers, but this was quite the cross-over between medical and political thriller. It was a good read.

[Darinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 6th book in the Nolan Kilkenny thriller series. Fast-paced and entertaining.

[Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, a continuation from book 5 in the series. It has a likable hero, good villains, so well worth a read...