The Hot Zone

Starred review from August 29, 1994
Far more infectious than AIDS, filoviruses (thread viruses) are relentless killer machines that consume a human body in days, causing a gruesome death. Symptoms include liquefying flesh, spurts of blood, black vomit and brain sludge. Outbreaks of the Ebola filovirus devasted Sudan and Zaire in 1976. And in 1989 Philippine monkeys in a Reston, Va., research lab, found to be infected with Ebola, were the target of a U.S. Army-led biohazard task force that decontaminated the lab, exterminating hundreds of monkeys to prevent the possible airborne spread of the disease to humans. In a horrifying and riveting report, portions of which appeared in the New Yorker , Preston ( American Steel ) exposes a real-life nightmare potentially as lethal as the fictive runaway germs in Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. Preston plausibly argues that the emergence of AIDS, Ebola and other highly adaptable rain-forest viruses is a consequence of ecological ruin of the tropics. A movie based on this book, directed by Ridley Scott ( Alien ), will star Robert Redford. Author tour.

Move over, Stephen King--Richard Preston's got a thing or two to show you about horror! What's more, this is a true story. It's the late 1980's, and Ebola Fever, an African virus with a 90% kill rate, breaks out in a research facility in the suburbs of the nation's capital. A biohazard SWAT team from the U.S. Army must secretly decontaminate the place. Writer Preston's sensationalistic treatment of this deadly situation is echoed in McGillin's reading. McGillin's narration is clear and gripping as he delivers straightforward characterizations of the book's anti-microbial heroes. E.K.D. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine