The book expertly weaves fact and fantasy, so that even a knowledgeable reader is uncertain at what point Preston's story becomes hypothetical. Black Biology includes the familiar "germ warfare," but it is much more. The term encompasses biotechnology and genetic engineering in their most secret and sinister applications as weapons of mass destruction.

Cobra Event is a typical good guys versus bad guy yarn about a presumably crazed individual who terrorizes with a tiny lethal substance. The bad guy is brilliant, malevolent, and driven. The good guys are members of a hypothetical, multi-disciplinary American task force of military, public health, FBI, CDC, Justice Department, and civilian experts. Richard Preston leads us to believe – or hope – that a similar group is, in reality, maintaining alert status under a classified Federal charter. The novel very convincingly asserts that some variant of its story is inevitable.

The story opens with a death. In only a few hours, a 17-year-old student has progressed from vaguely ill to a horrific, self-cannibalistic demise. Alice Austin, a naive, young Public Health Service physician, answers the call to investigate. Her forensic database expands as more victims are found. Bizarre deaths proliferate to become a potential national disaster.

While simultaneously pursuing the perpetrator and side-stepping the bureaucracy, the clever heroine steadfastly seeks diagnoses of the victims' illnesses rather than police investigator's solutions. Dr. Austin focuses her forensic investigation on medical science, albeit with a small dash of intuition.

The story is told in a factual, "reporter's" style. Its language is graphically descriptive in a terse construction that slowly amasses information and builds to a chilling climax. This is not a book for the fainthearted. If dissecting frogs in biology class was traumatic, do not read this book. The deaths depicted in Cobra Event aren't merely ugly; they are repulsive, hideous, and nightmare producing. Even worse, they are totally believable.

To embody the suspense, the reader must absorb a staggering amount of technical information. Preston's facts and hypotheses are exceptionally well researched. Thankfully, he is a smooth craftsman whose manner of presentation is both logical and readable. He does a superb job of preventing science from becoming a distracting tangent to the plot.

Regrettably, there is an absolute minimum of interpersonal character development. We learn detail as minute as the CDC's per diem rate for New York City ($90), but are merely told that Dr. Alice Austin is an independent, curious loner who is not unlovable. While the astute reader can make a few additional character observations, we are left awaiting a sequel.

Cobra Event is an excellent techno-chiller!

--Steve Nemmers