Josh Spanogle's debut novel is a mystery thriller, but don't be expecting a detective, a lawyer or a CIA agent to apprehend killers and terrorists. Spanogle takes a page from Michael Crichton here, and unleashes Dr. Nathaniel McCormick, a medical dynamo for the Special Pathogens Branch of the Centers for Disease Control to contain an alarming, unidentifiable virus that has broken out in group homes for the mentally impaired in Baltimore.

Nate, as we come to know him, is as brash and impulsive as a bright eyed graduate student with limited social skills. His audacious approach breeds enemies like fungi in a petri dish. Dr. Herbert Verlach, one of his two main allies (with detective Myers), questioning his pushy behavior says, "You're a piece of work, Dr. McCormick. You really are. You either got some balls on you or you're dumb as a post." In the end, bet on the former.

The virus is more virulent than any hemorrhagic fever, Ebola and dengue combined. When the common point of origin, a Douglas Buchanan, denies ever having been in San Francisco despite his room being plastered with posters of the city, Nate's boss Tim Lancaster sends him there, which happens to be his old academic stamping grounds. The change of venue seems as much for the investigation as to get Nate the hell out of Baltimore where influential enemies are piling up like a chorus of ancient Greeks rooting for the lion. Nate's return to San Francisco sparks old feelings for two former flames. He hooks up again with bronzed, blond Dr. Brooke Michaels while panting around Alaine Chen, who gives him a more common type of fever.

The peevish, sometimes cynical behavior of author Spanogle's hero is no dramatic coincidence. His bad boy in a China shop of disease is as germane as his knowledgeable trail through the intricacies of a well obscured mystery. Spanogle, currently a student at Stanford Medical school, writes deep and detailed, and has as good a handle on the thriller as on lidocaining before a self-inflicted wound.