Dark, delightfully chilling, and hugely creepy science fiction in the tradition of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and They Walked Like Men and The Thing. It's a summer movie in book form--especially great to take to San Diego and read on vacation. Carefully researched for plausibility, so that the horror is science fictional, this novel explores the terrors of the Fifth Kingdom. The buildup of terrifying suspense is slow, quiet, and creepy, but ultimately at our throats in a thundering climax as the future of human life is at stake. Linsey Simon, a lieutenant in the San Diego Harbor Police, and her husband, hard-hitting reporter Jack Simon, are thrust headlong into the dreadful case of a dangerous scientific experiment gone wrong. The desperate and ruthless CEO of a failing mega-corporation, Anaconda Inc., has illegally imported a fungal terror from the Peruvian jungle for pharmaceutical experiments. The fungus, which lay dormant for eons--checked by its Offensor and Defensor counterparts--arrives in a battered, scary looking tramp freighter and immediately starts wreaking havoc. First it strikes insidiously at the families of the pitiful sailors whose bodies it has taken over. The fungus takes over humans, each finding the next victim to join the growing invasion, transforming them into Fifth Kingdom humanoids that walk and talk like people, but act and smell a little strange. Their quiet ordinariness masks an insatiable and cunning savagery that makes the horror all the more gripping. San Diego, the beautiful tourist destination of blue skies and balmy sea breezes, becomes a terrifying capital of the Fifth Kingdom. Mankind suddenly finds itself at war with an unseen enemy--whosetroops are transformed humans stalking the streets, committing murder and mayhem on a growing scale. It all begins in little homes in ordinary neighborhoods, where a boy named Jimmy Mendez, and his cousin Maribel Walesky, await the return of their dads from the sea...