Set your clocks ahead a few months, if you dare get that close to the end of the world. Missiles are armed in North Korea and Iran. Impossible demands are made. The U.S. issues its ultimatum: disarm or be annihilated.
But the religious group, Pure Mind, vowing to protect the Earth from atomic Armageddon, issues an ultimatum of its own: all nuclear powers must disarm or be decimated by epidemic. To prove their capability, they deliver a sample of their bioweapon to the CDC in Atlanta. In two days, every scientist who has analyzed the virus is dead.
Dr. Kekoa Makai is sequestered with his research team on the private Hawaiian island of Niihau. His mission: neutralize the terrorist's weapon and buy time for a political solution before the Earth is destroyed by plague or by fire on Ultimatum day.
Professional Reviews
Honolulu Weekly
Fanatical religious organizations, the looming specter of nuclear Armageddon, an unknown bioweapon set to unleash a plague of biblical proportions and the research team racing to neutralize it. These elements, set disturbingly close to home and eerily echoing current events all come together in Ultimatum Day, a great yarn spun by local author John Mickey.
The bulk of the novel takes place in a quasi-modern Honolulu and Niihau with brief interludes set within the political labyrinth of Washington and the White House itself. Enter Dr. Kekoa Makai, native Niihauan, cell culture specialist, world-class waterman, and wayward son. Along with an international team of brilliant and eccentric scientists held together by the beautiful and undomitable Dr. Nomique Etienne, Koa struggles to stop the virus, avoid local politicos, and traverse a minefield of personal demons.
Although a thriller by definition, Ultimatum Day really shines when it comes to characterization, the trials and tribulations that the book inhabitants face (which are not what you may think in the face of a global end game) and the intricacies of the relationships between them--and human nature itself. Along with the author's intimate knowledge of Hawaii's people and a tense plot that keeps you guessing, the almost surreal situations--some of them hilarious--make this a refreshing and thoroughly entertaining read.
--I.G. 11/15/2006
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