Michael Carroll has spent seven years researching and writing his book, Lab 257. The lab is located on Plum Island, very near the Hamptons. The Hamptons is the fashionable summer playground of America's rich and famous and in the shadow of New York City. The unimposing 840-acre island is unidentified on most maps, however, on the few which it can be found, Plum Island is marked red or yellow, and stamped U.S. government restricted or dangerous animal diseases. Though many people live the good life within a scant mile or two from its shores, few know the name of this pork chop-shaped island. Even fewer can say whether it is inhabited, or why it doesn't exist on the map.