Black Sheep is squarely placed in the latter category. Patrick Lamb is a microbiologist who has created a GMO or Genetically Modified Organism. It will enhance the yield of petroleum products tenfold. This will pit the US, the Arab World and the oil companies in a race to acquire the GMO from the small company that holds the rights. And of course the group that opposes genetic engineering of any kind is involved, too.

The small company owner is Jonas Lamb whose son Patrick is a silent partner. Typical of Kaiser, the characters are created much larger than life. Jonas is pushing sixty, nearly bankrupt and keeping his mistress happy as his sixth wife is dying. To describe him as a self-absorbed philanderer would be an understatement. Realizing his small company needs money, Jonas approaches his old friend, billionaire Jimmy Yee, in Hong Kong for the development capital.

This now brings the Chinese into the battle for riches as word of the discovery gets out, and Jonas finds himself in one perilous position after another. Apart from trying to become King of the World, he is hoping to establish some type of relationship with his son and maybe win back Tess, Patrick’s mother and his second wife. Of course this would have to be after his wealthy sixth wife dies. If Jonas is to be believed, Tess is the only woman he ever really loved, and this relationship provides the threads for a less than compelling romance.

Jonas is not the only character taken to extreme. In fact, Tess and Patrick emerge as the most likeable of the lot. While it seems obvious that part of the mischievousness and part of the humor may have been done as a spoof, it nonetheless becomes tiring page after page.

The story is crafted for the most part in the third person, which further insulates the reader from the characters. There is a lot of dialogue and it is always in voice and crisp. But scene changes are very choppy as they move from Asia to San Francisco to Paris and on. The author foreshadows danger with the best of them, and his hero cleverly rises to overcome it time after time.

The complexity of Black Sheep is revealed by its underlying theme: Jonas’s search for redemption. It is hard to intellectually integrate this concept with his abiding passion to become one of the richest men in the world.

Whether or not you enjoy Black Sheep may well depend on the type of main character you like to follow. This one is humorous, sensitive, charming and intelligent. But he is also self absorbed, greedy, calculating and reprehensible - and all to the nth degree.

--Thea Davis