By Douglas Hassan, MD. New York, NY: Page Publishing, 2015. ISBN 978-1-68139-655-2. Paperback.

Dr Hassan was in several of my classes while working toward his medical degree at UBC in 1987, and then went on to study orthopaedics and hand surgery. He currently works with Puget Sound Orthopaedics. I have also known his father, Dr Leslie Hassan, a retired North Vancouver physician for many years, so it was a very pleasant surprise to read Dr Hassan’s thriller, The Reservoir, the first volume of a planned trilogy.

Several stories are intertwined in this fiction with bioterrorism as the underlying theme. A report of an Ebola-like virus that is devastating the populations of small villages in the Virunga area of the Congo, and the suspicion that an unidentified species of highly evolved apes might be the reservoir of the virus, prompts a scientific expedition. A small team sets out from Seattle—an anthropologist expert in apes, his friend, an orthopaedic surgeon, an adventurer familiar with the area, and a security person. In Paris they are joined by a virologist from the Pasteur Institute. After an arduous journey down the Congo River the group encounters the new species of ape and obtains blood samples for further study, but unknown to them a Pakistani doctor turned terrorist hoping to create a biological weapon is also on his way to find a sample of the same virus. When the CIA becomes aware of the potential bioterrorism threat, agents joint the race to intercept the plan.

It would be unfair to readers to reveal the dangers and conflicts that the group runs into, and the CIA’s wild pursuit of the terrorist across several continents. As for more about the viral sample held in the Pasteur Institute in Paris, you’ll have to wait for the second installment of this trilogy. I am looking forward to it.
—George Szasz, CM, MD
West Vancouver