Bradley Waldroup

Does a propensity for crime depend on one’s DNA?

This book begins strangely. Kathryn Paige Harden and her man Travis go off into the Texas desert to take some LSD in the hope that it will provide a ‘hard serotonergic reboot’. They have not so far had sex, but Travis has plans. ‘You’ll come back with your third eye,’ he says, ‘and then we’ll fuck. You’ll be glad we waited.’ At this point you may be tempted to hurl the book across the room. The self-centredness is oppressive. But persist. It rapidly becomes a very powerful read. Harden is a psychologist and behavioural geneticist, and the primary theme of Original Sin is the way in which science raises questions