In 1973, Mideast strife and the oil crisis have knocked the global economy to its knees. With every company and country locked in a search for new sources of energy, the reclusive industrialist, Dr. Petr Chopek, calls the world s greatest scientists, engineers, and business leaders to his remote South Pacific island to show them what he has discovered.

Pulp fiction writer, Gadsen Wells, is not a scientist but when his new companion, renowned paleo-botanist, Dr. Harold Braunhut, dies mysteriously, Wells takes his place on the decrepit prop plane flying to Chopek s island. Accompanied by Braunhut s beautiful nurse, Amber, Wells finds a paradise where scientists are engaged in experiments to learn how to exploit a new energy source linked to a species of giant salamander, long thought to be extinct.

Then Wells learns Chopek s true plans. The ancient salamanders are being genetically altered, designed not to save the world but to control it. Wells and Amber escape Chopek s spies and sneak into the labyrinth beneath the island to try to stop him.

As though Jules Verne had written a James Bond novel, C-Monkeys is a ripping read about a world just strange enough to be real.