The Mosquito War - Hardcover

MacAlister, V. A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312878702 ISBN 13: 9780312878702

Publisher: Forge Books, 2001

Synopsis

They were so close to a cure. And no one cared. Why should they? Americans would not care about malaria until their own children woke screaming with the fever, until they started burying small caskets in their own country. Su Thom picked up the flask. It was only a tiny sample, but it wouldn't be hard to culture. The idea was so simple. So horrible. So perfect. Americans did not care about anything until it was a threat to their own people. Well then . . . that could be arranged.

The Mosquito War is a fast-paced thriller with crooked pharmaceutical companies, a CIA plot gone horribly awry, and a terrorist weapon that comes in a very small package. When combined, these elements produce a deadly force that one grief-stricken scientist is determined to unleash on the American people to make them pay for their indifference to the plight of Third World suffering.

Who will try to stop him? Conor Gale, a world-weary young man who has more pride than sense, and Zee Aspen, a beautiful scientist working on aquatic medical research that might hold the key to the whole puzzle. Thrown together, mistrustful, but believing that the devil you know somewhat is better than the hordes of unknown bad guys who are definitely out to get you, they will have to work fast or an epidemic, unparalleled in our history, will spread this nation . . . and millions will die.

About this title

About the Author

V.A. MacAlister is a scuba diver who has worked at various times as an instructor, divemaster for expidition cruise ships, underwater model and support diver for Hydrolab. She lives in Washington D.C.

From the Inside Flap

"The Mosquito War is a fast-paced thriller with crooked pharmaceutical companies, a CIA plot gone horribly awry and a terrorist weapon that comes in a very small package. . . A scary and urgent tale of how biological war could really come to the USA."

Reviews

A scuba diver and a gourmet caterer in her nonliterary life, MacAlister here crafts a debut thriller distinguished by its luminous underwater diving scenes and earnest focus on a Third World health crisis. As the book begins, pharmaceutical firm SeaGenesis has found a cure for malaria a serum derived from sea sponges looking like spinach, and therefore labeled "popeye" but the higherups cut funding for the project before the cure can be thoroughly tested. Frustrated Vietnamese lab assistant Su Thom, whose mother and brother died of malaria, decides to take matters into his own hands. How better to make Americans care about finding a cure than to toss two large jarfuls of mosquitoes bearing a fatal strain of malaria into a mall throng in Washington on July 4? Meanwhile, beautiful scuba-diving scientist Zee Aspen, who collects popeye for SeaGenesis, becomes suspicious when one too many accidents happen on the job. She joins forces with a rough-edged Robin Hood, Connor Gale, who works for a company providing private security for unscrupulous SeaGenesis and has also noticed that something fishy is going on. What is SeaGenesis's link to the CIA? And is Connor's adoptive father and boss hiding secrets of his own? Connor, the orphaned son of a smalltime thief and pickpocket, is a compelling character, and MacAlister crafts a convincing bioterrorist scenario. If her attempt to follow the lives of a selection of Americans bitten by malarial mosquitoes is a little forced, readers will forgive her once they make it to the novel's moving conclusion.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Imagine a dedicated researcher who decides the only way to get funding for a malaria cure is to start an epidemic in the U.S. That's the premise of this first novel by a gourmet chef and scuba diver. It's a solid thriller with a linear, albeit somewhat predictable, goodversusevil plot and characters who are different enough to seem reasonably fresh. There are a few problems, such as occasionally stilted dialogue and a tendency to overexplain things to the reader. But some other novelists (Robin Cook springs to mind) have produced strings of best-sellers despite a rudimentary grasp of plotting and an inability to write dialogue or create characters; MacAlister is already better than that, and, with practice, she may go far. This is a promising first novel, intelligent and mostly successful. Medical thriller fans will be satisfied. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312878702
• ISBN 13: 9780312878702
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320