Rating: 
Summary: Harrowing germ thriller
Review: Clarity of detail drives Ouellete's harrowing biotech thriller as relentlessly as its result -- panoramic disaster.
Epidemiologist Elaine Wilkes' new computer program predicts a disease that will sweep the world. But when she discovers that her company plans to hide her cure formula in order to drive up the price, she absconds with the data, unaware that the deadly pandemic has already begun.
As the various heavies (including a sociopathic convict) joust for control of the formula, Ouellette charts every detail of the bacteria's opportunistic evolution, imparting horror to the mundane.
Wilkes enlists Seattle cop Phil Paris in her efforts to avoid capture, even murder, and alert the public authorities. Paris himself is obsessed with his belief that a madman is creating bouts of disease through food contamination in restaurants.
Ouellette keeps a lot of balls in the air here, some more successfully than others. But his real triumph is the riveting and utterly credible tale of the disease. Ouellette, like Michael Creighton, has the ability to wholly imagine the spreading ripples of his scientific vision and to invest them with vivid detail. A thrilling read, sure to rouse lasting germ paranoia.
Rating: 
Summary: Bugs All Over The Place!
Review: Everyone has heard of bacteria gaining resistance to antibiotics, this novel takes resistance to a deadly extreme, helped along by international travel. In addition to a great thriller in it's own right, Pierre Ouellette gives readers little lessons in biology and epidemiology, very informative and interesting indeed, for example, the bacteria involved here, Chlamydia, is overwhelmingly unstoppable and spreads very easily due largely to it's slow build-up of symptoms, allowing an infected person to spread it widely without being aware of it. Plot and character development are superb. A Lt. Paris of the Seattle Police Department is chasing a small time bio-killer in the area, and he is quickly caught up in a much larger scenario, one of natures' making. Much of the story involves a Dr. Elaine Wilkes who has research data for a vaccine against the plague, others are intersted in getting their hands on this data for their own self-interest. There are many characters in this novel, all are fully formed and believable, the story was a page turner for me, well worth reading, and scientifically plausible.
Rating:
Summary: Only the truth is scarier
Review: Having spent the past two days reading The Third Pandemic, I was amazed that the author didn't pull his punches. In just about every other plague book the author would provide a eleventh hour miracle but not in this one. The spread of the plague seems realistic with airlines being the carrier of death. Only one detail seems to bring down the book by two stars. Although the Characters are well developed, with one nasty surprise, the raw amount of coinicidences is almost too much to bear. I could understand how improable the genetic mutations in the bacteria happens.....when dealing with billions everything has a chance. However what is the chance that the person who could replicate stolen research is one of the instigators of the plague? Beyond that this book provides a chilling look at a future that the world may one day experience.
Rating:
Summary: An exciting, non-stop thriller!
Review: I couldn't put this book down, 36 hours of reading and only three hours sleep! The Third Pandemic raises some very scary fears, especially in light of recent knowledge that there are more virilent strains of bacteria and virus which are resistant to modern medicine's known army of soldiers. The epidemic put forth in this book is plausible and frightening! Well worth reading
Rating:
Summary: Plausible? Yes. Prophetic? Who knows.
Review: I found this book in a bargain bin at my local public library. It did not deserve to be there.
A great medical thriller with many, many twists and definitely not ordinary.
Not ordinary because all the characters are superbly developed and portrayed. Realistic dialogue that is unique to each character. Great backstories that make sense and are pulling at your heartstrings.
Not ordinary because this pandemic is not caused by an evil villain, although evil villains try to take advantage of it.
Nor ordinary because there is no miracle cure uncovered just in time to save the population in a dramatic fashion, although tragically and ironically there could have been.
Not ordinary because we get scenes from the viewpoint of a parrot, a fly and even a microbe!
Not ordinary because the technology in the book is right on target and realistic as hell. (Watch to see how many of today's technologies the author predicted in this book have already come along).
Terrific book. Great scope. Impressive character development. No stereotypes.
The author had many opportunities to let this book disintegrate into the banal or the absurd, but he never chose the easy way out. And it shows.
Rating:
Summary: Thrilling, yet enlightening ? almost too real
Review: I guess that I got hooked into this story early on by being introduced to some germs that were patiently waiting for their opportunity to finally make something of themselves. This so close-to-realty thriller packs quite a punch, and in the process teaches you a lot about viruses, bacteria, and their propagation. It spends a lot of time detailing and explaining the circumstances of how a global bio-disaster comes about. You will be on the edge of your seat as you await the inevitable holocaust. There is a lot of suspense as the story jumps around to various circumstances, incidents and characters around the world, that eventually form the collaborative underpinnings to support the disaster that is to befall the global community. Basically, the story is about how a devastating and complex plague emerges and rapidly decimates the human population around the world. It incorporates elements of corporate ethics and espionage, as well as domestic terrorism. Although the central characters are a policeman and a scientist, there are many others who play important roles throughout the story - business people, a prostitute, a parrot, a prisoner, and many more. Interestingly, the germs that cause the plague are presented as characters as well. They take on an anthropomorphic disposition to give the reader a sort of a one-on-one dialog about how they appear to "think", and like other living organisms, ensure their survival and evolution to higher levels. The Third Pandemic illustrates how new, lethal pathogens can emerge and quickly destroy their hosts. It also makes you realize the importance of having public agencies providing proactive and globally coordinated efforts to identify and respond to such potential and actual epidemics. Although this book is chilling in its implications about germs and our vulnerability to them, it also provides considerations that we all should be aware of as we prepare for responses to emerging biological challenges.
Rating: 
Summary: it's no "Deus Machine"
Review: I picked up "The Deus Machine" in a closing sale at a local bookstore for under 2 bucks, and I couldn't have been more surprised with my find. Limiting my readings to hard science books, I never really got a taste for novels. Ouelette's first work introduced me to the world of the great hard science FICTION novel- and I was floored. High off the buzz from "Deus," I picked up "The Third Pandemic" expecting much of the same. I was disappointed. Ouelette never really gives the characters any real life of their own. The cop with a past, the business man with godlike power, etc. are all present in the book- but they never transcend their potypical limitations. Ouelette seems more content to describe the lives of microscopic bacteria in flowery prose than the lives of real people. By the fifth time reading a personified description of "tribes," "armies," and "expeditionary forces" of bacteria, i found myself wondering why the people were getting the short end of the stick. While the book is truly scary in the sense that this can actually happen, it lacks the special attention to the human condition that would transform it into a novel. As it stands, its a nice book about some stuff you and i will never see that effects the lives of people we aren't sure we care about.
Rating:
Summary: it's no "Deus Machine"
Review: I picked up "The Deus Machine" in a closing sale at a local bookstore for under 2 bucks, and I couldn't have been more surprised with my find. Limiting my readings to hard science books, I never really got a taste for novels. Ouelette's first work introduced me to the world of the great hard science FICTION novel- and I was floored. High off the buzz from "Deus," I picked up "The Third Pandemic" expecting much of the same. I was disappointed. Ouelette never really gives the characters any real life of their own. The cop with a past, the business man with godlike power, etc. are all present in the book- but they never transcend their potypical limitations. Ouelette seems more content to describe the lives of microscopic bacteria in flowery prose than the lives of real people. By the fifth time reading a personified description of "tribes," "armies," and "expeditionary forces" of bacteria, i found myself wondering why the people were getting the short end of the stick. While the book is truly scary in the sense that this can actually happen, it lacks the special attention to the human condition that would transform it into a novel. As it stands, its a nice book about some stuff you and i will never see that effects the lives of people we aren't sure we care about.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific bio terror thriller
Review: The propagation of an unabated global plague that threatens the extinction of mankind, is the central theme of Pierre Ouellette's outstanding novel "The Third Pandemic". The mutation of the organism causing psittacosis, an avian borne pneumonia type disease threatens the demise of the world in a manner similar to that of Black Death in the Middle Ages.
The decimation of the disease is experienced through the eyes of four well developed characters, two heroes and two villains. Seattle police lieutenant Phil Paris is obsessed with discovering the identity of a mysterious person that he is convinced "poisoned" his wife. While eating at a local restaurant, he observed a strange person exiting from the kitchen. Within a short time his diabetic wife Ginny succumbed to a severe case of Salmonella poisoning which left her in a vegetative coma.
The mysterious person known as Vincent, is a schizophrenic maniac who on numerous instances over the course of years has introduced pathogens into food in other establishments for unknown reasons.
Meanwhile epidemiologist and researcher Dr. Elaine Wilkes of the Webster Foundation, a subsidiary of Uni Corporation, has devised a computer model for the developement of a worldwide plague for which there is no known cure. It is postulated that this bug has a 72 percent probability of appearing within a ten year period. Her model could help Uni formulate an antibiotic cure or vaccine which could potentially net billions.
Unfortunately, due to a series of fantastic circumstances, this lethal plaque actually does break out in Sao Tome, an island 150 miles off the coast of central Africa. Owing to a long incubation period and the unknown nature of the disease, it is spread by both travelers and inhabitants leaving the island. Soon a pandemic threatening to wipe out 60 percent of the world population is unleashed.
The possible cure, which lies within the information contained in Dr. Wilkes' computer disks, becomes the focus of several opportunists. One such person is a ruthless criminal genius Barney Cox, who orchestrates his release from prison by coercing a high ranking Uni official. He is angling toward securing the precious computer disks.
Ouellette using vast knowledge of basic microbiology crafts a very frightening but believeable scenario that is within the realm of possibility. I was very impressed with several passages that detailed mechanisms of bacterial mutation and infection at the cellular level.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating, at times beautifully written
Review: The Third Pandemic is a novel about the current emergence of antibiotic-resistent bacteria. I've read several books of this genre, and this is certainly one of the best. The book is at times very well written. Noteworthy is that the author employs bizzare kind literary egalitarianism as an interesting literary device: Disease is narated by ALL its participants -- bacteria living in meat, a fly landing on the infected meat and contracting he disease, an infected mouse biting on a person, that person sleeping with someone else and infecting her, etc. This is not Camus' The Plague; If the author had some profound message to share with his readers, he sure didn't develop it here, but it is a nice and interesting novel nevertheless.
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