cover image Carriers

Carriers

Patrick Lynch. Villard Books, $23 (355pp) ISBN 978-0-679-44842-6

As if Richard Preston's The Hot Zone wasn't scary and exciting enough, here's a fictional account of the eruption of an ebola-like virus in a tropical setting-in this case, Sumatra. A U.S. Army medical team is sent out to seek the source of the plague at the jungle camp of an American scientist who hasn't answered radio calls for weeks. As more victims succumb, the Indonesian government takes draconian measures and the American team struggles with the jungle and the Indonesians. Meanwhile, the ex-wife of the missing scientist shows up, searching for her twin 12-year-old daughters. Lynch maintains a brisk pace as he focuses on the spread of the disease and on the search for its source and vector. High-tech medical detail boosts realism, while the author's penchant for melodrama, including numerous cliffhangers and scenes drenched in blood and other bodily fluids, may distract readers from dwelling on the two-dimensional characters and hard-to-swallow anticlimax. This is no match or substitute for the Preston, however, and Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain remains the outbreak novel to beat. 100,000 first printing; Literary Guild selection; audio rights to Random House Audio. (Aug.)