The Blackpox Threat

The Blackpox Threat is a novel about a young woman, Tamara Smith, who is reluctantly drawn into an attempt to stop a bio-terrorism plot that could infect the entire world. Tamara recently took on the PR position at the Modano Company, an antique auction house and shipping company that handles items of a rare and delicate nature. She loves her job, that is, until Brad Wilson, an agent with CSIS (Canadian Security and Intelligence Agency) recruits her to help with a suspected bio-terror threat that could be brewing at her workplace. Although Tamara has only been working there a short time, she is in the ideal position to act as a spy, and CSIS feels she owes them because her family was rescued from Russia by the British and Canadian governments many years before, and now they've come to collect on their debt. Tamara resents this, but since her dear family friend, Vassilli Petrovic, has helped to enlist her, she goes along with it. All she has to do is just watch the comings and goings of her co-workers and report anything suspicious back to Brad Wilson. But, can it be that simple?

Throughout the course of her spy work and regular business, Tamara begins to suspect the many people she encounters on a daily basis. Her boss, Charles Modano, is suspicious in that he takes last minute trips, but he seems so jovial and kind. His assistant, Dianne Templeton, an aspiring model and actress, is very selfish and seems harmless enough, however Harry Pearson, a customer of Modano and the owner of the Pamper Yourself Spa, has been trying to woo Dianne and has also asked her to do some odd favors for him, as of late. He prefers to have her pick up certain parcels from customs rather than having them delivered straight to the office.

Since Tamara finds this interesting and worth investigating, a trip to the spa yields more information than she thought and Tamara soon finds herself being pursued after she swipes some documents from Harry's office, one he shares with a biochemist named Frank Milton who has ties to other not-so-savory scientists in other parts of the world. As Tamara digs her way deeper and deeper into this situation, she finds that the only person she can trust is a new friend named Justin Devry, the handsome son of a customer of Modano's. She soon discovers that the plot she is working to stop involves men from all around the world who are working to create a deadly smallpox/ebola hybrid and plan to hold the world hostage by infecting certain cities. However, infighting between the scientists creating the virus and those who hold the purse strings may be just the break they need. Before it is all over, Tamara will not only lose a dear friend, but she will have to face a madman to save another friend's life and, possibly, to save the entire world.

The premise of this story really intrigued me, as I typically like thrillers with a scientific or medical bend to them. However, I found that The Blackpox Threat bogged the story down with too many characters. There were over 40 characters in the story - so many that there was a character list in the front of the book, and, for that reason, only a few really stood out in my mind. A character might be briefly mentioned, then not touched on again for quite some time and, by that time, I'd have forgotten them. I think the character list was a nice touch, but it shouldn't be a necessity. Aside from that, at times, the dialogue between characters seemed a bit sophomoric and not really believable. I've read dozens of thrillers in the past with government agents as main characters and the things that these agents said just didn't ring true.

Overall, I didn't love The Blackpox Threat. While it was an okay thriller, I just didn't feel that drive to find out how the story played out. I found the plot to be a bit jumbled and too character-heavy, and the characters weren't very relatable. If you are a fan of the previous works of Rene Natan, you may want to check it out, but I just wasn't a fan of The Blackpox Threat.