With the kids all gone on summer vacation, this teacher is taking a break from the children's literature and reading some "big kid" books. I guess I've needed that, as I've gone through three books with 300+ pages in two days. The first one I read was Outbreak, by Robin Cook.
Outbreak is a medical thriller centered around Dr. Marissa Blumenthal. Marissa works at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) in Atlanta. One of her duties is to investigate a situation when a possible new disease appears. She's fairly new to her position, so the idea of being the "expert" in the face of a new disease is fairly daunting to her.
Daunting or not, her first assignment soon comes. She gets a call to report to a hospital where a patient has arrived with multiple severe symptoms. He'd been treated for everything from malaria to cholera, with no improvement. It's up to Marissa to figure out how to treat him and how to protect others from getting it.
Protect others? Too late. By the time Marissa's examined the patient, there are more than a dozen other cases waiting. The disease was spreading like wildfire.
With the help of many other doctors and technicians, the disease is finally confirmed as the deadly Ebola virus from Africa. It can be transmitted by any body fluid and has a fatality rate of more than 90%. Pretty deadly stuff.
No sooner does Marissa return to Atlanta when she is called out on another case, which sounds suspiciously like another Ebola outbreak.
Part of Marissa's job (outside of containing the outbreak) is determining how the disease is being spread. It's as Marissa starts investigating this that she starts noticing unusual things. For example, each of the index cases (the first person to show symptoms in a particular city) was mugged a few days prior to being admitted to the hospital. There are certain similarities about each of the hospitals where the outbreaks are occuring. Then Marissa notices something horrifying--her house was broken into and her dog killed. She can't help but wonder if the break-in was related to her research.
I don't want to give away much more of the plot, but trust me when I say that it kept me at the edge of my seat. Actually, "kept me awake" would be more accurate, as I stayed awake until 2:30 AM to finish it. There are moments where you think, "Okay, that's kind of a cheesy plot twist," but most of them are unexpected yet reasonable.
Part of what made this book so enticing was its realism. I read a quote somewhere (which I can't find again!) that seemed to sum up this book. It said something to the effect of: Science fiction used to be scary because it was so far away from what we knew. Now, science fiction is scary because it's so close to what we know. That's part of the terror of this book; kind of a "it could happen to you" syndrome.
Obviously, it's a quick read, as I read it all in one night. For those who prefer to take things a little more slowly, the book is 340 pages long, but they go quickly!
If you're at all into medical thrillers, I would suggest Outbreak by Robin Cook as one you should read.
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