The Han Agent

Amy Roger’s The Han Agent is a political thriller set in Japan. The protagonist, Amika Nakamura, is a Japanese-American virologist working at UC Berkeley. When she publishes a paper that defies the genetic manipulation of the 1918 influenza virus, she is immediately fired from the university. Luckily, her brother, Shuu, helps her get a job at a Tokyo pharmaceutical company. Eager for the job, Nakamura happily accepts. However, as she begins working there, she soon discovers that the company has connections to Unit 731, a biological and chemical weapons program during World War II that performed horrific experiments on humans, not unlike those performed by Nazi Germany’s Josef Mengele. Soon, Amika becomes drawn into a vast geopolitical plot that will lead to Japanese ultra-nationalists seizing power and unleashing destruction on an unprecedented scale.

The Han Agent is a superb science-based political thriller. The book has its share of action. Characters are developed and multi-faceted. However, the strongest point of the novel is its moral lesson. What this book is trying to teach is that while science is a wonderful thing, it can become a fearsome weapon when those with ill intent use the knowledge not to help people but to bring destruction and advance personal agendas.