Deep in Africa, an international team of aleoanthropologists is in search of the keys to mankind's past. They're after bones. Ancient human bones. But what they'll find will change the course of history. Forever. There's a tantalizing triangle at the heart of this drama: Samantha, a beautiful, ambitious field paleontologist; Jack, a renegade scholar with a checkered past that includes both Samantha and some off-the-wall evolutionary theories; and Dorn, Samantha's new lover, a ruthless, rich South African arms dealer hoping to gain respectability through scientific discovery. As Link races from the African jungles of Mali to the rain forests of Bolivia, it becomes only too clear that two's company . . . but three's the matrix for global disaster. At stake is nothing less than the final piece in the evolutionary puzzle, a prize that will confer instant immortality upon its discoverer. With the answer to this riddle comes technology so advanced that the future of the human race cannot go unchanged. But there's more to the search than meets the eye. A covert unit of the CIA is on the scene with a secret agenda of its own -- and the cold determination to accomplish its mission at any cost. It's a chase that will keep readers on the edge of their seats from the first page to the final climactic revelation: that the "missing link" that made the leap from ape to man may have been stranger than we'd ever imagined. Fast-paced and provocative, this is a thriller that races the heart and challenges the mind. Paleoanthropologist Samantha Colby makes a startling find in West Africa, then links up with former lover Jack Austin to outrun some bad guys. It's all good, Indiana Jones-style fun, and if the text is weighed down at times by excessive scientific theorizing, it's still entertaining enough to have hit the Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News best sellers lists. At a recent benefit involving multiple authors, Becker sold more copies of his book than anyone but Tom Brokaw, a newsworthy event in itself. Morrow has him on tap for two more novels. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Earnest, slightly hokey Michael Crichton style adventure tale that poses an extraterrestrial origin for some of humanity's best and worst traits. Newcomer Becker's grasp of speculative anthropology is surprisingly down-to-earth he appends a solemn afterword on unanswered questions about human origins, including a bibliography ranging from Charles Darwin to Carl Sagan. But such high seriousness is undermined by gratuitous gunplay, turbid romance, and spy-versus-spy plotting. A better-than-average debut that evokes suspense and moments of gee-whiz wonder from a tired science-fictional premise. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. ...Now, here's an amazing tale! Pay close attention because you may one day find that this fiction is unsettlingly close to fact. Link is a tale of adventure that draws from recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries. These discoveries strongly suggest that human civilization, perhaps even our genes, may have been influenced by visiting extraterrestrials. This is not as far-fetched as it may seem, for Link fictionalizes only the characters and story line, not the vast amount of supporting evidence for this intriguing hypothesis. Becker weaves this evidence into his prose seamlessly, but even scientists may want to read it, for this novel is an irresistible catalog of factual material worthy of further investigation... -- Paleobook Reviews, Gallagher, Oct. 1998 Walt Becker is an author, director, and screenwriter for film and television. A native of Pasadena, California, he received a B.A. in communications from UCLA and his master's degree from the USC School of Film and Television. He wrote and directed the feature film comedy Buying the Cow for Destination Films and Sony Pictures, and his first book, Link, was published in 1998.