From Publishers Weekly
CBS veteran Clark (Nobody Knows) brings a network news producer's sensibility to the story of a newsroom in the throes of anthrax-induced pandemonium. In quick chapters that jump-cut among numerous points of view, Clark narrates a nerve-racking week in the life of KEY News producer Annabelle Murphy. When Annabelle's medical correspondent, Dr. John Lee, holds up what he says is a vial of weapons-grade anthrax on morning TV, panic ensues: executives call management meetings, security agents peer into spy cameras, the FBI snoops around and doctors dispense Cipro. Lee's anthrax proves to be table sugar-but then Annabelle's colleague Jerome Henning, who's quietly been writing a nasty tell-all, lands in the hospital and quickly succumbs to the disease. A food-service worker is murdered next, and another person is found dead. Annabelle frets about Jerome's manuscript and tries to figure out what's going on, all the while unwittingly carrying anthrax spores in her coat pocket. Who needs terrorists when there are so many office villains around? There's the aging, control-freak male bigwig, the driven female executive, the insider-trading business reporter and the cocaine-sniffing theater reviewer, to name a few. Clark's spare prose depends on brisk dialogue and rapid-fire action sequences, and her stereotypical characters are pastiches of a few simple virtues, flaws and guilty secrets. Still, the yarn entertains with a little network gossip and a short lesson in bio-terror, all seen through the eyes of a network producer who starts out fearing for her job and ends up fearing for her life.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
When we last visited the KEY News desk in
Nobody Knows (2002), there was a serial rapist on the loose and an overzealous reporter dying to break the story. This time the focus changes from the overzealous reporter to a medical correspondent who, in researching a story on the threat of anthrax, shocks his coworkers and audience by producing a vial of the vile stuff and saying, "If I can get my hands on this, just think what the terrorists might do." Panic ensues, of course, and is further inflamed when it's discovered that someone replaced the real poison powder with mere confectioner's sugar. Where, then, is the anthrax? Annabelle Murphy, the medical segment producer, knew nothing of the prank or the theft but finds herself in hot water when trace spores of anthrax are found in her office. Knowing that her coworkers, the feds, and the police will turn this investigation into a publicity op, Annabelle takes it upon herself to uncover the truth. Clark has perfected the lightweight suspense novel, where in classic Christie fashion, everyone is a potential suspect. Harmless (unlike anthrax), timely, and downright fun.
Mary Frances WilkensCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
