The First Horseman

Rating:
Summary: Not as good as Genesis Code - but worthy.
Review: It is not nearly as revolutionary in its thinking as The Genesis Code, but it is still well worthy of your time. Good writer who makes the story interesting. You can do far worse than this book.

Rating:
Summary: Totally enthralling
Review: Tasi-ko, a small North Korean town, is under siege by what the visiting doctor called the "Spanish Lady". Soon afterward, a plane destroys everyone in the town except Kang, who happened to be outside the area seeking help. Kang escapes to South Korea and explains to the authorities what happened to his town. Eighty years ago, the "Spanish Lady" killed thirty million people and now it is back.

Washington Post reporter Frank Daley is looking forward to joining the scientific expedition heading to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen for what could be a major part of the story of the year. The team will try to recover strains of the "Spanish Lady" from some deceased minors, allegedly preserved by the frozen tundra. Frank misses the trip north due to a storm, but catches up with the ship and crew on their return. However, everyone seems frightened and no one will talk about what they found on the island. The obstinate Frank keeps digging in hope of finding a deep throat, but instead he learns that Armageddon may be just around the corner.

THE FIRST HORSEMAN is a first rate biomedical thriller that will become one of the top novels of the year. With our shrinking world, the story line could have come off of yesterday's headlines. The novel highlights the return of a pandemic outbreak that shook the planet eight decades ago and could come back even deadlier than before. With this book and THE GENESIS CODE, John Case makes a case that he might just be the leader of modern day biomedical thrillers.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A little of this, a little of that
Review: This book has weird cultists, North Korean bad guys, a biological weapon capable of killing billions and not the brightest main character ever to grace the pages of fiction.

Spanish Lady refers to the 1918 influenza outbreak that killed thousand of people around the world in a matter of months. All of a sudden, it looks like the North koreans may have figured out a way to bring Spanish Lady back from past, and the good guys need to get on top of this problem before the bad guys perfect their weapon.

The story shifts dramatically to Frank Daly, a Washington Post reporter, who stumbles across the story and gets entangled with a far out cult. The cult's founder, Luc Solange gets most of his money from the North Koreans (why the Nkors would pick Luc and company to deliver their weapon system is never explained).

Eventually, Frank Daly ends up in a life or death confrontation with Luc and company armed with nothing more than the First Amendment. Perhaps, this art initating life, but I would have arrived there with nothing less than a squad of Force Recon Marines and a couple of tanks.

Without giving away too much, journalist Frank saves the world from destruction at the hands of the Nkors and looney cultists.

If you forget that Frank is kind of dumb, the story holds together pretty well and demonstrates just how vulnerable we are to BW or CW attack using our infrastructure.

Worth a quick read.