The Cobra Event
Ratings13
Average rating3.8
The Cobra Event is set in motion one spring morning in New York City, when a seventeen-year-old student wakes up feeling vaguely ill. Hours later she is having violent seizures, blood is pouring out of her nose, and she has begun a hideous process of self-cannibalization. Soon, other gruesome deaths of a similar nature have been discovered, and the Centers for Disease Control sends a forensic pathologist to investigate. What she finds precipitates a federal crisis.The details of this story are fictional, but they are based on a scrupulously thorough inquiry into the history of biological weapons and their use by civilian and military terrorists. Richard Preston's sources include members of the FBI and the United States military, public health officials, intelligence officers in foreign governments, and scientists who have been involved in the testing of strategic bioweapons. The accounts of what they have seen and what they expect to happen are chilling.The Cobra Event is a dramatic, heart-stopping account of a very real threat, told with the skill and authority that made Preston's The Hot Zone an internationally acclaimed bestseller.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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I knew, after reading [b:The Hot Zone 16213 The Hot Zone Richard Preston http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320438393s/16213.jpg 909325] that [b:The Cobra Event 376613 The Cobra Event Richard Preston http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1223665252s/376613.jpg 817262] wouldn't disappoint, and I was right. Fast paced, [b:The Cobra Event 376613 The Cobra Event Richard Preston http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1223665252s/376613.jpg 817262] had me on the edge of my seat up until the very end. My removal of a star certainly had nothing to do with plot or characters. I didn't quite notice this in [b:The Hot Zone 16213 The Hot Zone Richard Preston http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320438393s/16213.jpg 909325], but Preston's method of storytelling is a double-edged sword; very straightforward, but in such a way that it creates vivid imagery. It does get tedious, however, when the sentences would reduce themselves to short, choppy bites of information (“They wear a chainmail glove on their dominant hand. It shows dominance in the workfield. It prevents accidental cuts. So they are worn during autopsies.”) which did serve to pull me out of the narrative a few times. It improves as the story progresses, but it did get frustrating. Four out of five stars, and a definite library search to find more of his work!
