C-Monkeys (Electronic book text)

In 1973, Mideast strife and the oil crisis have knocked the global economy to its knees. With every company and country locked in a search for new sources of energy, the reclusive industrialist, Dr. Petr Chopek, calls the world's greatest scientists, engineers, and business leaders to his remote South Pacific island to show them what he has discovered.

Pulp fiction writer, Gadsen Wells, is not a scientist but when his new companion, renowned paleo-botanist, Dr. Harold Braunhut, dies mysteriously, Wells takes his place on the decrepit prop plane flying to Chopek's island. Accompanied by Braunhut's beautiful nurse, Amber, Wells finds a paradise where scientists are engaged in experiments to learn how to exploit a new energy source linked to a species of giant salamander, long thought to be extinct.

Then Wells learns Chopek's true plans. The ancient salamanders are being genetically altered, designed not to save the world but to control it. Wells and Amber escape Chopek's spies and sneak into the labyrinth beneath the island to try to stop him.

As though Jules Verne had written a James Bond novel, C-Monkeys is a ripping read about a world just strange enough to be real.