In a gripping medical thriller that mirrors the coronavirus outbreak all too closely, epidemiologist Dr. Henry Parsons visits a detention camp for Indonesian gay men, hoping to understand the cause of a deadly illness there before it can spread. His wife and children back in Atlanta just want him home, but when the virus hits the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca of more than two million faithful that is the world's largest human gathering, Henry finds himself marooned abroad by a travel ban while a pandemic ravages the world. New Yorker staff writer and author of the Pulitzer-winning The Looming Tower (2006), about al-Qaeda and 9/11, Wright meticulously paints the direst personal, social, and political scenarios that a virus can create, focusing particularly on the U.S. and Middle East descending into anarchy. Readers will find a memorable character in Henry, a doctor who is shown living with a disability while getting on with crucial work and family life. His family, too, will stay with readers, as the consequences for them form a heartbreaking microcosm of world events and the lengths to which humans will go to survive. This book is likely to be on best-of-the-year lists and is a must for public libraries.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The combination of a high-powered novel from a celebrated nonfiction writer and the compelling connection to current events is sure to generate off-the-book-page coverage.

As a lethal virus of unknown origin ravages huge swaths of the planet, legendary American disease fighter Henry Parsons heads up increasingly hopeless attempts to control it. The easily transmitted disease, which literally turns its victims blue, is first detected in a refugee camp in Indonesia, "hothouse of diseases." Sent there by the World Health Organization, Parsons quickly recognizes the dangers at hand but not quickly enough to prevent his infected local driver from leaving the camp to join some 3 million worshipers on the annual hajj. When attempts at quarantines in Mecca fail and the infected pilgrims return home, they carry the disease all over the globe. In light of the relatively few disease-related deaths in Russia, suspicions arise that the virus was bioengineered by Putin. The Russian leader, of course, blames America, where cities and institutions begin crumbling. After blood drips from the eyes of the president, midspeech, and the vice president is infected, the ill-prepared government is driven into an underground facility in Virginia. (CNN's Anderson Cooper apparently perishes but not Wolf Blitzer, who still commands The Situation Room.) Featuring accounts of past plagues and pandemics, descriptions of pathogens and how they work, and dark notes about global warming, the book produces deep shudders. Wright, author of acclaimed nonfiction such as The Looming Tower (2006), about the Sept. 11 attacks, knows his way around geopolitical terror, but he's less successful as a thriller writer, upstaged here by the recent, real-life coronavirus. There is little true suspense in the novel, which sketches in its nightmarish scenarios rather than dramatizing them. Even a suicide bombing has marginal impact. Ultimately, the book gets caught up in family drama, sentimentality, and end-of-the-world moralizing. An atheist since his missionary parents were killed in an air crash, Parsons rediscovers religion. A disturbing, eerily timed novel but no page-turner. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.