'Germs of War' by Ketan Desai is a great big 'airport lounge' of a novel i.e. you could read it in the airport lounge while waiting for your delayed flight.

Little thought is required to follow the roller-coaster action in this book. Whilst the characters are hard to believe, Ketan Desai is indeed an expert on bacteria. Little surprise then to learn that Dr Desai MD PhD has a background in medicine, virology and immunology! This tale is a veritable "Bug fest"!

Set at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota (USA), Dr Tariq Bukhari develops the ultimate biological weapon. A terrorist, working for the Pakistan ISI (Inter Service Intelligence), he unleashes a controlled quantity in the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) of the clinic to test the weapon's effectiveness. Within hours everyone in the ICU is dead, their lungs filling with so much fluid that they drown in their own cells' secretions.

Tracy Hopkins, a medical PhD graduate assigned to work with Bukhari inadvertently becomes the possessor of the remaining quantity of the deadly bio cocktail. She escapes from the clinic with not only Bukhari and his terrorist group chasing her, but also the CIA, and a corrupt politician in hot pursuit. You can readily suspend disbelief at this point.

Fortunately for Tracy, her father is an ex-rear admiral with expertise in counter-intelligence; her brother is a genius computer hacker and her boyfriend is a rugged mountain climber. She avails of all their skills in evading her pursuers and in finding a "safe" way to dispose of the biological time bomb, one which she merrily couriers to her boyfriend via Federal Express!

The plot races along with car chases, cliffhangers and mishaps along the way. The CIA is portrayed as being so incompetent that Tracy's only hope is her own motley band of amateurs. There are also traces of wry humour - the terrorists' obsession with cars, particularly a Citroen car with the number plate CHOCL8 (get it?) that they steal from Mr Hopkins's neighbour.

Ketan Desai has undoubtedly done a great deal of research as there are pages describing, what I imagine to be, a modern day terrorist network spanning from Afghanistan to the Middle East. But then he has proceeded to slather it all with honey and nuts to end up with a sticky, sickening, unsatisfying biscuit bar of a book.

At best it reads like a plot for a bad 'B' movie. At worst it just gets worse. Still if you need a brain-numbing, fast paced thriller, then this is the ideal book.

About the Author

Dr Desai, MD Ph.D., has a background in medicine, virology and immunology. He is a pharmaceutical industry consultant with Phase Scientific in Austin, Texas.

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