The Third Twin

The Third Twin is a techno-thriller by the British writer Ken Follett and published by Random House publications in 1996. A New York Times bestseller, the book deals with genetic engineering and the nature and nurture debate through the subject of identical twins raised apart.

Jeannie Ferrami, Psy.D., is an associate professor and criminality researcher at the fictional Jones Falls University, an Ivy League school in Baltimore, Maryland. She studies the influence of genetics (rather than upbringing) on personality, and if her interest in criminal tendencies is influenced by the fact that her father, Pete, is an incarcerated burglar. Her finances are strained, forcing her to send her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother to live in a sub-par nursing home.

Jeannie and her friend Lisa Hoxton hastily evacuate an on-campus locker room during an apparent fire, and Lisa is raped amid the chaos. The police determine that the perpetrator pumped smoke into the locker room; the attack was the work of a serial rapist. Lisa works with sympathetic police Lt. Michelle Delaware to create a facial composite of the suspect. Jeannie later meets Steven Logan, a young law student who is a subject of her study, and they become attracted to each other. She informs him that her software, which finds links in raw data from medical records, has identified him as the twin of Dennis Pinker, a murderer sentenced to life in prison. Steve is troubled, because this seems to confirm his fears that he is unable to control his own violent impulses; he once beat a man nearly to death for damaging his new leather jacket. Berrington "Berry" Jones, a prominent researcher at JFU, is shocked when he sees Steve. He contacts his two partners in Genetico, Inc., a medical research company that heavily funds JFU; Jones, Preston Barck, and United States Senator Jim Proust are racist and classist, and apparently believe that the involvement of Steve and Pinker in the study will jeopardize Genetico's $180 million sale to international conglomerate Landsmann, and with it Proust's presidential campaign. Berry disrupts Jeannie's research by alerting the press to the legitimate ethical issues of her software. Soon after, Steve is arrested for Lisa's rape and Lisa picks him out of a lineup, but Jeannie believes his claims of innocence. Steve is released on bail after two days.

...
Wikipedia