Fatal Consequences: The Dust of Centuries III

'Fatal Consequences' was originally published as 'Murderous Traits'.

Quincentenarian John Andrews is in a state of shock. Only weeks after meeting his long-lost daughter Paola for the first time, almost five hundred years after she was born in Naples, she has been abducted and the brutally murdered body of an unidentified woman has been found in the Cape Cod house where Paola lived.

To add to John's confusion, DNA and eye-witness evidence show the culprit behind the crimes is John's oldest friend Jacques Bognard, the urbane seafarer from seventeenth-century Marseille.

While Jacques protests his innocence and the police build their case, it takes the expertise of Claudia Reid, the feisty forensic geneticist who helped to unravel the code behind John Andrews' centuries-old secret, to explain the paradox.

But why has Paola been abducted and by whom? Remembering his own close brush with death at the hands of the ruthless big pharma magnate Wallingford Peterson, John is convinced that Paola's life is in imminent danger. And given that she has disappeared without trace, someone with resources as extensive as Peterson's were must be responsible.

Meanwhile, Paola is sequestered on a remote estate thousands of miles away where her captor attempts to beguile her. Determined to outwit him, Paola draws on murderous skills acquired over the centuries while at the same time facing the hard truth about herself.