Deep Zone
James Tabor

Ballantine
April 3, 2012/ ISBN: 9780345530615
Medical Thriller, Mexico
Amazon

Reviewed by Bob Walch

If you read and enjoyed The Andromeda Strain written by Michael Crichton, you'll love this medical thriller. When a mysterious epidemic begins striking down American troops in Afghanistan, there's obviously cause for worry. But when that epidemic threatens to spread to the U.S. and the rest of the world, panic sets in.

Microbiologist Hallie Leland is summoned to the White House and directed to do whatever she can do to create a new antibiotic that will ward off the looming calamity.

Hallie is up to the task but, unfortunately, the ultra-rare organism she needs is found only at the bottom of one of the deepest caves in the world. With a team of support personal that includes the mysterious Wil Bowman, a man as well versed in weaponry as microbiology, the group heads for a forbidding section of Mexico. Here dangers lurks both above and below ground, and it soon also becomes clear that there are those who do not want this epidemic stopped.

James Taylor is an accomplished non-fiction writer who has hosted a PBS series on outdoor adventures. This is his first novel and he puts his previous experiences and the knowledge he has gained in his assignments to good use in this thriller.