The Cobra Event: A Novel

Another great book by Preston .

I suggested this book for my club thinking it would be a great beach book. It was exactly that. Fast-paced, easy reading, but still thought provoking. Definitely not "mind-candy." I devoured it with the same enthusiasm as last summer's book, "Gone Girl." In fact, I saw many parallels between the two, not least the illustration of the frightening amount of damage that one individual can inflict upon the lives of others. Fortunately for the vast majority of humanity who are not sociopaths, circumstances very rarely converge as they do for the antagonists of both of these novels, bestowing them with brilliance and insatiable neediness and immorality and blind ambition and vast amounts of idle time.The novel begins with the grisly death of a seventeen-year-old girl in Manhattan. Cause of death is determined to be due to a pathogen of unknown origin. Similar deaths follow, which sets us on the course of a "bio-investigation" (for lack of a better word) which in turn becomes a full-scale operation including the FBI, NYPD, CDC and NSA. There is much historical and scientific information given by way of backstory, sometimes a little awkwardly. While the book itself is fiction, the science and history upon which it is based are accurate, making it that much more alarming.Preston is a Science Journalist by profession, not a novelist. This is evident in the style of the work. It can be awkward, as stated above, maybe even a little cheesy...not Dan Brown cringe-inducingly bad, just not crisp. In spite this, there are some passages that are brilliant, almost poetic. These are always in his descriptions of forces of nature, which clearly evoke passion in the writer.Bottom line: a fun (well, as much fun as gruesome illness can be), exciting trip to the world of forensic pathology. Club meeting should include other guilty pleasures such as cheap Chianti, Velveeta dip and raw cookie dough (c'mon, we all love it.)

I read this book when it first came out two and a half decades ago and it still holds up. I devoured it very quickly then and in a couple of days this go-round, as well. It’s just that exciting! Once you get started you just have to know what’s next. Really believable plot with well-researched science. Highly recommend!

Richard Preston has made a career based on writing books based on the scariest diseases you've never heard of. From  The Hot Zone  to  The Demon in the Freezer  and even chapters of  Panic in Level 4 , Preston has used his skills as a journalist to tell real world stories of the CDC, real viruses, and real researchers.The Cobra Event is a bit of a departure from these books in that it is part fiction and part non-fiction. Preston does a great job of using real-world events to set the stage for a fictitious bio-terrorism attack.The first half of the book seems like it is nearly all factual -- describing the history of biological weapons research around the world (including in the U.S., Russia, and Iraq). Then, over time, the book starts to subtly switch toward the fictional event that Preston imagines could happen.The result is an incredibly believable, terrifying, and cringe-inducing story.My only quibble with the book is that it wasn't 100% clear which parts were entirely factual, which parts were entirely fictional, and which parts were a mix. On one level that speaks to Preston's ability to weave together a completely believable story. On the other hand, intellectually I would like to have a clearer line between fact and fiction. Preston makes a stab at this in the epilogue where he describes a little bit about what is real and what isn't. But I could have used a little more detail in that section.

I have great respect for Richard Preston's nonfiction work, and this book is at its best when he is dealing with the doings of the FBI, CDC, USAMRID, and with the truly creepy life-cycles of the organisms threatening to decrease the world's human population. In that mode, the book is like a good police procedural. As a cohesive novel, though, Preston undercuts his own narrative a number of times with two nasty habits: overwrought gory details and polemics. The book is not for the squeamish, as anyone who has read his nonfiction would understand, but Cobra Event goes way beyond accurately detailed descriptions of *hot* autopsies and into the realm of David Cronenberg's "Scanners", complete with anatomically detailed exploding heads. I mean, leave something to the imagination, Richard, OK? The "splatter" descriptions are overstated and unsubtle, even if they do serve as plot points and have to be there. The other problem (for me) is that from time to time he stops the narrative cold to deliver-to the reader- a denunciation of some international organization or some other clearly dangerous situation somewhere in the world. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I didn't like the film Lord of War because it stopped occasionally to remind the audience, with written messages at the center of the screen, how bad arms trafficking is; and I don't like it when an author drops the story temporarily to yell at me. That didn't prevent me from picking the story back up and continuing to the end, but it seems to me that Fiction should remain fiction. Harper Lee didn't break into To Kill a Mockingbird to inform her audience that a black person can't get a fair trial in this country, she showed us with her characters' interactions. I can't help thinking that Preston, a capable writer, could have worked the same way to make his points.

A great read, gives pause for thought.As relevant now as it was then.Great readAs relevant now as it was when it was written.

A mistura de elementos reais com elementos ficcionais dá a estória uma boa dose de realidade.Também é notável o conhecimento do autor sobre infecções e epidemias o que confere ao livro um aspecto bem interessante neste aspecto.Li esse livro durante a epidemia de covid 19 e ele foi uma companhia bem agradável até mesmo nesta situação...

I had read this book before, but due to the Covid 19 virus, I wanted to read it againFantastic, thought provoking book, easy to read and not too heavy... excellent buy..You won’t be disappointed.

Roman basé sur des faits réels, avec d'excellents contributeurs du CDC et de l'USAMRID.Richard Preston sait de quoi il parle. Il est par ailleurs l'auteur des excellents ouvrages "Virus" et "Ebola".C'est bien plus qu'un roman policier ou de la science-fiction. C'est la réalité.Je recommande vivement!

This is a great book. It is about biological warfare and weapons and you really do not want to be infected by some of the concoctions that could easily be brewed and loaded onto a warhead.The core of the story is about a deluded nutcase who wants to cut the population down significantly, much like the Black Death did in the 16th and 17th centuries, basically for the good of the survivors. New York's population should be decimated first before this guy and his vicious virus move on round the States.The virus he has engineered is gruesome and the descriptions of its effects are worse than gruesome. Nevertheless, the mixture could probably be manufactured by some sadistic laboratory and relatively easily spread. It's a nice little mix including smallpox and the common cold and it attacks the brain and kills very quickly - and horribly - anyone who comes into contact with it, and there is no treatment.The book kept me on the edge of my chair for quite a while. It was an enthralling read, excitement all the way from cover to cover.Highly recommended but a strong stomach is advised.