Ryan and Jessamine McCloud are founders of a brilliant, unorthodox think-tank. Commissioned to study the growing tide of global violence and social unrest, they begin to fear that a kind of disease, the Babel Effect, is behind it all. Could there be a biomedical explanation for global insanity?
Ryan's investigation is abruptly shattered when his wife is kidnapped and, threatened by powerful organizations, he grows increasingly desperate to halt the contagion of the Babel Effect ... before it's too late for his family ... before it's too late for mankind ...

His name is Machine. His true identity is unknown. He targets companies developing futuristic military weapons. He steals the technology and disappears without a trace. All of his victims are killed. No one knows what he is doing with the stolen weapons and technology.
But a highly classified, mission impossible-style CIA group knows Machine has targeted a company developing a high-tech military combat suit that allows the person to become invisible using cloaking technology.
Steve Conway, an IWAC member, is the team leader on the operation in Austin, Texas, to capture the elusive Machine. But when the operation turns deadly, Conway narrowly escapes with his life and finds himself the only living member of a botched operation.
But as Steve Conway plunges ahead to find the suit, he uncovers clues that lead him to believe that the deadly Machine may in fact be acting as Conway's dark guardian angel in order to protect him from the real forces who want the suit - forces that may emanate from within the CIA itself.

A shallow grave and a pornographic drawing draw Lucas Davenport into a deadly quest for a predator with a single-minded hunger for his chosen prey. In the mist and rain of a Minnesota spring, a shallow grave is found. It contains the body of a young woman, apparently strangled. When the murder is connected with a brilliantly-executed erotic drawing, where the victim's face has been grafted onto a pornographic internet image, Lucas Davenport becomes involved. More of the drawings come to light and Davenport, with the help of a local sheriff's deputy, makes a grisly discovery. The drawings may represent more murder victims, strangled with a starter rope from an antique outboard motor. As Lucas investigates further, he uncovers a web of deceit, related to a series of young women involved in the arts. All of them had some connection to the local university, and all of them had a new boyfriend who remained unseen by their friends. There the trail seems to end until further investigation of the grave site results in an horrific discovery. On the misty, oak-covered hillside south of Minneapolis, the case begins to come together in Lucas' mind, but the mixture of ferocious intelligence and madness which he faces means that the deaths must continue, that the chosen prey must be stalked...