The Andromeda Strain

Michael Crichton is a mediocre writer, but he created a handful of science fiction thrillers with such realistic and terrifying plots that they remain fresh in my memory decades after reading them. I can’t say that about many other crime/thriller authors, even some of the better ones like Henning Mankell or Lee Child. In The Andromeda Strain, Crichton's first novel under his own name, a deadly microbe from a US space probe lands in a small Arizona town, where team of biomedical scientists are tasked with its underground decontamination. Some of the best and most intelligent sections of the book are Crichton’s descriptions of the spread of the microbe, including the well-intentioned but flawed medical protocols and the chemical composition of the organism.