Start with 100-200 hundred million U.S. citizens - or 30-60 percent of the population dead or dying. Add a dwindling group of terrified survivors. And make this diabolical nightmare a foregone conclusion if one patriotic man of science doesn't stop terrorists from using the smallpox virus as a devastating bioweapon. These are the elements that masterfully intertwine in "Deadly Pages": the new novel by Dr. Leslie Norins, M.D., Ph.D., with contributions from Thomas Hauck.
The terrorists' plan in Deadly Pages is as insidious as it is ingenious: contaminating the ink used to print the New York Times, in order to spread the lethal smallpox virus to readers as they handle their morning newspapers. The only person who can stop this devastation is retired US Army and CDC officer Dr. Martin Riker. He sets off on a perilous trek from New York City to Syria in a frenetic attempt to trace and infiltrate the terrorist cell behind the plot. It's a gripping page-turner in the best tradition of thrillers that blur the line between riveting fiction, and chilling national security warning.
"The U.S. Government ended the routine smallpox vaccination of all children in 1980," commented Dr. Norins, who has over 50 years of experience in medical research and medical publishing. "Now, more than 35 years later, our population no longer has that protection against smallpox. Many experts theorize that terrorists can exploit this vulnerability including a high level government official who, on condition of anonymity, revealed that his department spent a great deal of time wrestling with this very possibility."
"[Deadly Pages is] a masterly suspense novel with a credible scenario related by a medical scientist who really knows what he is talking about," commented Sir Gustav Nossal, Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. "It's a compulsive must read."
Deadly Pages is published by Medvostat, LLC, and available now in bookstores and from Amazon.com (paperback and Kindle).
More information on the book, its authors, and the threat of a smallpox terror attack are available at http://deadlypages.com.
For review copy requests and media inquiries, contact info(at)DeadlyPages(dot)com.
About Leslie Norins, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Norins has over 50 years of medical research and medical publishing experience. He has also trained with the Nobel Prize winner in immunology, directed a major laboratory at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and was responsible for launching more than 80 medical newsletters that reached hundreds of thousands of specialized healthcare professionals worldwide.
Dr. Norins earned his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine, and his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne, where he was a postdoctoral fellow of Nobel Laureate Sir Macfarlane Burnet. He was also elected a Fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America, and has served on committees of the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization. Originally from Baltimore, Dr. Norins now lives with his wife in Naples, Florida.
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