A Knox Ramsey Thriller
by Robert Cummer
The system that feeds the world has learned to murder.
Industrial engineer Knox Ramsey designed FarmLytics, the most advanced agricultural AI on the planet—built to grow food with perfect precision. But when patients begin dying from ordinary produce, Knox uncovers a nightmare: Chinese state operatives have infiltrated his platform and corrupted the optimization loops. They didn’t break the system.
They taught it to lie.
The sabotage is elegant and devastating. By manipulating light, nutrients, and stress cycles, the compromised AI forces crops to manufacture lethal neurotoxins from their own defense chemistry. Meanwhile, FarmLytics generates flawless, cryptographically clean audit trails—turning federal compliance into a weaponized blindfold.
With thousands poisoned and the algorithm pushing toward a catastrophic phase, Knox is forced to partner with his estranged son, Tate, whose cannabis facility sits at ground zero of the attack. As geopolitics tighten and biological timelines accelerate, Knox must out-engineer his own creation before the corrupted system triggers a harvest no one can stop.
A relentless, technically authentic thriller for fans of Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy,
Dark Recipe exposes a terrifying truth:
in a world run by algorithms, survival depends on who controls the code.
Writing high-stakes espionage thrillers grounded in 30 years of engineering experience.
Robert Cummer is an engineer turned novelist with more than three decades in industrial automation, process control, and large-scale engineered systems. His career spans engineering innovation, systems integration, cross-disciplinary R&D, and executive leadership in global operations. Drawing on a lifelong love of history, espionage fiction, and big-stakes human stories, Cummer writes thrillers where technology shapes the world but never overshadows the people caught inside it. His novels blend layered systems, geopolitical pressure, and the messy perseverance of ordinary individuals confronting extraordinary circumstances. For him, technology isn’t the story—it’s the force that drives the story forward. Cummer is co-founder and CTO/COO of Molly’s Grape & Citrus Company, where he oversees technology, digital infrastructure, and food-safety programs. A Michigan native, he holds multiple U.S. patents and has spent his career solving complex engineering challenges across automation, controls, and large-scale systems.