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Rating: 
Summary: Miss it
Review: I have rarely read a more absurdly amateurish book. In the hands of, say, Nevada Barr, the same story would have leapt off the pages. However, we have a book chock full of the inexplicable and the unexplained, cliches, improbabilities, two-dimensional stereotypes, characters acting out of character, ... in fact, to be brief, thoroughly poor and unskilled authorship.
Rating: 
Summary: Hmmm... Sounds Familiar
Review: I'll give this book the benefit of the doubt and rate it as 5 stars, as I have not read it. But the plot is interesting: a biopharmaceutical company launches an expedition to retrieve (in secrecy) the viral remnants of the 1918 influenza outbreak. The place: the frozen landscape of Alaska. The target: deceased gold miners from the period.The plot was so enticing in fact that I used it myself in an earlier book. If you'd like to read a carefully researched, and much longer version of this story (at 662 pages) check out Ninth Day of Creation, ISBN 0967571294. Most likely Davis just had the same idea as I did, though I seem to have got to print earlier. Personally, I think an outbreak similar to 1918 is just a matter of time, so the information contained in the "Spanish Lady" genome is valuable, and will remain so. I might also point out that between me beginning and finishing my book, the genome was in fact located at the Armed Forces Institute in the wax-preserved autopsy material of 1918 victims. The results of the genetic sequencing of this material should be completed within the decade... Leonard Crane, author of Ninth Day of Creation
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable
Review: See story summary above. I enjoyed this mystery thriller. The locations in Alaska and the flashbacks to NYC all helped to bring a little more substance to this story. The characters did come of as a little shallow in my opinion. I also think a little more history could have been wrapped in the story. As with any fiction novel, I rarely read the whole jacket summary, for it gives away far to much information and leaves few surprises. I get the protagonists name and read the first couple sentences and that's usually all. Recommended.
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