Outbreak
Robin Cook

When the director of a Los Angeles health maintenance clinic succumbs, along with several patients, to an untreatable - and virulently contagious - virus, Atlanta's Center for Disease Control goes on red alert. Unless the virus is isolated and checked, mankind may be facing its gravest medical crisis since the Black Death.
Assigned by the CDC to investigate the disease, Dr. Melissa Blumenthal is soon caught up in the ultimate nightmare. The California case is merely the first in a burgeoning series of outbreaks that occur in unrelated geographical areas but with puzzling commonalities: The locations are always health care facilities, and the victims are only physicians and their patients.
As her investigation takes increasingly bizarre turns, Melissa finds that behind the natural threat lurks a far more sinister possibility: sabotage.
Before she discovers the truth, Melissa must overcome her superiors' fury, her collagues' doubts - and the wrath of a powerful cabal, sworn to achieve its aims, no matter what the cost in human life - including Melissa's.

First and foremost, I should say that this book has no connection to the 1995 film starring Dustin Hoffman. The title is the same, and that's about it.

This book deals with people who are knowingly infecting doctors with the Ebola virus. The virus then spreads to those that the doctors come into close contact with (patients, wives, lovers, and even lab techs) and must be contained before reaching the general population. The only problem is that no one other than Dr. Melissa sees that there might be a conspiracy behind the outbreaks even though they keep cropping up in different parts of the United States.

The more Melissa finds out about what is really causing the Ebola outbreaks, the more her own life is put in danger. In the end, one of the people who is trying to kill her is found out to be someone she is close to and trusts.

This book is a good read from the very beginning. Not only does it teach the reader a few things about Ebola and viral hemmoraghic fevers in general, but it also engaging and frighteningly realistic. Could someone really spread such a horrific disease in this way if they had access to it? Yes. Luckily, not many people in real life have such access.

The characters with the larger roles in the book are more fleshed out and the others are a bit two dimensional, but that doesn't really pull the reader out of the book.

My main complaint is with the author's feeling that a woman, at all times, needs some sort of male or boyfriend to turn to (even at the end of the book). However, seeing as how this book came out in 1987, I'm more willing to overlook this than if the book came out recently.

All in all, this novel is a good and exciting read, especially for anyone interested in the medical field. I would recommend it.

My rating: Four out of five snails.