Book info

• Title Whiteout
• Author Ken Follett
• Year 2004
• Genre Thriller

A Family Reunited. As a blizzard descends from the north on Christmas Eve, several people converge on a remote family estate in Scotland. Stanley Oxenford, director of a pharmaceutical research company, has everything riding on a drug he is developing to fight a lethal virus. A Brewing Storm. Several others are interested in his success too: his children, at home for Christmas with their offspring, have their eyes on the money he will make; Toni Gallo, forced to resign from the police department in disgrace, is betting her career on keeping the drug safe; and a local television reporter, determined to move up, has sniffed the story, even if he has to bend the facts to tell it. A House Under Siege. A sinister gang spots an opportunity to use one of Stanley’s children against him and steal the virus. As everyone takes shelter, it becomes apparent that being inside the house may be more dangerous than the storm outside, especially when a lethal virus might be on the loose...

Thoughts

I’ve read this one before but could remember very little about it so figured it was about time I reminded myself what it was about. I really enjoyed it just as much second time round as I did the first, following the story of an attempted robbery at a high tech bio-facility, where deadly viruses are stored.

It’s also the story of how a family can fall apart but also pull together in the most dire of circumstances, and those two sides - the criminal thriller and the familial dramatics - mesh together surprisingly well to create a really interesting story.

I read this super quickly, whipped through the pages from the early biosecurity measure details to the final happy ever after, and I loved every minute of it.

Rating: 5 / 5