Ken Follett, Whiteout

Couldn't get past the first few pages - Whiteout held some promise but the writing was awful.

Particularly offensive to the senses was a line about Toni not liking [the guy who stole the rabbit] 'that'way ('that' was italicized, for crying out loud!)

Sorry Ken.

Whiteout

Ken Follett

Dutton, Dec 2004, $26.95, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0525948430

Toni Gallo is the facilities director at Oxenford Medical where the owner invented an anti-viral vaccine. Toni runs security. While making a routine check she finds a vial of the viral serum missing. She tracks it to an employee who stole a rabbit infected with Madoba-2 a variant of Ebola, but worse. The employee is dying from the rabbit's bite as the serum does not work on Madoba-2. While Toni and her employer Stanley Oxenford perform public damage control, his son Kit plans to break into the lab and steal the serum.

Toni caught Kit stealing from the company to pay off his gambling debts and his father fired him even though he did a superb job of creating the security system for the firm. Kit owes over $250K to nasty people; the only way he can pay his debt is to steal and sell the viral serum. What he fails to understand is that the buyer is uninterested in the cure; he wants Madoba-2. Stranded at his parents' home by a blizzard, Kit must choose between his confederates or his family.

WHITEOUT is a frightening thriller because it shows no one is totally safe even with top-notch, fail-safe security systems and processes to control laboratory viruses and bacteria. Toni is an independent, strong-willed woman who risks her life to insure that the criminals do not escape with the deadly virus. On a par with the best of James Patterson and Nelson De Mille, Ken Follett injects the thrill and chill in his latest thriller.

Harriet Klausner