Here's my latest review for the Joe Bob Briggs website.

****

Isolation by Christopher Belton;
Reviewed by Steve Chaput
Published by Leisure Books; ISBN 0843952954

In the hands of a lesser writer, or someone without the background of Belton, this book would probably be nothing more than another Robin Cook knock-off. A large corporation, trying to cover up some medical experiments gone wrong, will do anything to keep the truth from coming out. We’ve seen it so often that even prime-time television has overused the plot. Belton takes this story and actually makes it interesting, while allowing us a glimpse into the Japanese psyche.

Peter Bryant, an American expatriate, works for Hamada Seiyaku, a Tokyo-based pharmaceutical company. The company has secretly been contracted by the Japanese government to create a highly contagious, deadly virus, which would be used against foreign troops invading Japan. Unfortunately, an accident occurs allowing the virus, for which there is no vaccine, to be released to the civilian population. As first hundreds and then thousands of people begin dying the Japanese government and the executives of Hamada decide to go to any lengths, including assassination to cover-up their complicity. Byrant finds himself a target of a murder attempt when he makes the mistake of going to his superiors with questions about the virus. The recipient of information leaked to him from someone in the inner-circle of Hamada, Peter becomes important to both sides in this matter. Suddenly he finds his life turned upside down when he goes from being a translator of Japanese patents to agent for the U.S. government trying to discover just what his former employer is doing and why. The entire nation of Japan finds itself isolated from the world as the United States and other nations try to prevent the disease from spreading further.

Belton makes Bryant, his Japanese girlfriend, Michiyo and many of the other characters in this story sympathetic and believable. These are people caught in a situation for which they are not prepared and where they find themselves threatened by both the disease and forces who wish to keep their secrets. He lets us into the heads of the Japanese politicians and businessmen who brought this about to begin with. These are not evil villains, but men who have worked for years to gain the power they now have and have come to believe that it is their right to protect that power, no matter who or what gets in their way. Belton uses his own experience, living and working in Japan for several decades, to bring to life the customs and way of life of the Japanese, which casual visitors or tourists could not begin to understand.

Three and a half stars
***********