Alex’s a dedicated, single-minded researcher whose work dominates her life. Her social life takes second place and is in direct contrast to her professional life. Raised by a flower child mother (her father was killed in Vietnam), Alex looks for excitement and spontaneity in her friends and lovers. Her most recent boyfriend, Luke, was a musician who introduced her to the club scene but then moved on. Her best friend Barbara is a lawyer with the AFIP.

AFIP has a new director, Colonel Jack Wiatt, who had hoped to be appointed to head the FBI. He sees this assignment as a major step down but is determined to use it to increase his visibility. When a high-powered female executive is murdered in a suite at an expensive San Diego resort, Wiatt sees the AFIP resources as a forensic tool. Alex sees it differently – anything that takes time from genome-mapping is an unwanted distraction –but is given no option. It is Alex who notices the small tattoo on the victim’s breast. Other tattoos have been found on other recent murder victims. A serial killer may be at work.

Meanwhile, a Congressional committee is looking into whether the National Museum of Health and Medicine, which is currently housed at AFIP, should be moved to Ellis Island in New Jersey or stay in where it is. This brings her into contact with Texas Congressman David Thorne whose interest in her is more than scientific.

Alex and her colleagues at AFIP see a pattern to the killings – they occur at eighteen day intervals, and the calendar is on all their minds.

Sequence isn’t an easy novel to reduce to a synopsis because there are so many interwoven subplots. What is particularly impressive about Sequence is the range of subjects at play in the plot. Alex is explains the genome project and DNA; Barbara expounds on due process and search and seizure. And it all makes sense. Too many books have characters with interesting occupations who never do anything professional at all over the course of the novel. Sequence is the welcome exception where the characters live the lives the author has given them.

Who is this author who can write intelligently on genome-mapping and legal doctrine while keeping the suspense pumping and the narrative flowing? Author Lori Andrews has a resume her fictional characters would admire. She’s a law professor and genetics expert and that’s just for starters. She’s been widely published in non-fiction and professional publications, but this is her first novel.

I don’t know when this woman sleeps. And her website says she’s contracted for two more novels.

Sequence is a smart, well-plotted suspense novel with intriguing characters and an unusual heroine. This one deserves a strong recommendation.

--Lesley Dunlap