To Jade Chandler, my editor, for being such a big fan and champion of my work and for helping me polish the story to the best of my abilities;
To Irene Goodman, my literary agent, for standing by me when the chips were down;
To Danny Baror and Heather Baror-Shapiro, my foreign rights agents, for bringing my books to places I barely knew existed;
To George Edwards, skipper of the
Nessie Hunter IV
, for his expertise on Loch Ness;
To Shelley Innes and Elizabeth Smith of the Darwin Correspondence Project, for providing the solid foundation over which all my wild speculation about Charles Darwin is built;
To Erik Van Eaton, friend and trauma surgeon, for helping me kill people in creative ways;
To Susan Tunis, for all her hard work in pointing out my dumb mistakes;
To Frank Moretti, my father-in-law, for late nights going through the manuscript;
To Beth Morrison, my sister, for suffering through my first drafts;
And to Randi, for being the best wife a guy could ever hope to marry.