Focuses on a disappointingly small part of the epidemic, but digging into the virus’s genesis and design makes for a...
In the authors’ debut thriller, scientists worldwide are baffled when an apparent epidemic featuring strokelike symptoms can’t be traced to a virus or germ.
Studying humans’ longevity, CDC statistician Katie McMannloses is understandably upset when a couple of the women she’s been monitoring die. But the women were over 100 years old. What really gets Katie concerned is the unusually high rate of deaths among people 90 and over. The deaths seem to be the result of strokes, but in just a couple of days, the number of deaths in the U.S. hits a staggering 80,000. While scientists can’t find a virus or bacteria, Katie’s blood tests from the fatalities pinpoint six key markers. Katie surmises that what the CDC calls SDX, or “symptomatic disease unknown,” is somehow accelerating the aging process for internal organs, but she’s faced with another obstacle when she tests herself and learns she’s infected. So, too, are most others—except one negative: Katie and her husband Rob’s daughter, Hope. To find a cure, Katie desperately needs to locate another negative candidate before the world’s population is wiped out completely. Despite the global epidemic, the story is surprisingly small-scale, focusing mostly on Katie, her family and others at the CDC. This highlights the scientific approach and generates suspense as Katie tries to determine SDX’s origin and runs test after test in search of another person like Hope. The seemingly endless tests also slow down the plot considerably, and dialogue is filled with guesswork, theories or briefings—for people like the president—that often detail test results readers already know. Scenes with Katie at home with Rob and their three children help relieve the tension of the lab, while virus expert Dr. Ben Shah’s trip to Russia (SDX’s probable starting point) both expands the story beyond the U.S. and develops a supporting character; in fact, Ben’s former lover and daughter are over there. More traditional aspects of the thriller genre crop up late in the story, but they’re Katie-centric, including someone possibly following her and a potential threat on her life. The novel fares best when it sticks to the intercontinental ramifications, particularly in its powerful, dauntless coda.
Focuses on a disappointingly small part of the epidemic, but digging into the virus’s genesis and design makes for a riveting story.Pub Date: July 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-0990485414
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Rhino Air
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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