Hank Parker's gripping bioterrorist thriller, Containment, shows how deadly pathogens in the wrong hands can be far scarier and more destructive than bombs.
Parker, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Medicine and a former adviser to the U.S. government on agro-terrorism, uses his scientific expertise to craft a realistic plot in which an obscure hemorrhagic virus, similar to Ebola, is used by terrorists as a weapon of mass destruction via ticks and other animal vectors. Parker develops his two protagonists, epidemiologist Mariah Rossi and covert bio-threat agent Curt Kennedy, with a nice human touch that offsets more technical aspects of the plot. Although some of the character-driven subplots that unfold are a bit contrived--a missing-father scenario, for one--they never overwhelm the narrative's main action.
And when it comes to action, Parker delivers. His prose is tight, rhythmic and vivid, propelling his characters from scene to scene. Besides some riveting sections set in the Philippines as Rossi and Kennedy hunt down a terrorist cell, Containment's most exciting passages trace the fallout of a mass quarantine in the U.S. as the virus spreads. Deftly switching points of view among government officials, journalists and people trapped in the increasingly chaotic quarantine zone, Parker creates an eerie yet disturbingly real apocalyptic atmosphere. Even scarier than gruesome deaths from the disease are outbreaks of violence and the gradual deterioration of civil order. Well-written, well-paced and sobering in its implications, Containment recalls the work of Michael Crichton and other greats of the bio-thriller genre. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist and fiction author.