Web Craze

Web Craze, Ron Cox, Cox Publishing, 1999

Matt Carrigan, a twenty-year veteran of the CIA, is fed up with the spy business and wants out. After escaping from an Iraqi prison, where he had spent the previous two years, Matt wants nothing more than to go back to America, quit the Agency, and see if he can rekindle a romance with Lisa Avery, his old girlfriend. Of course, it's not that easy.

He is enticed into one more assignment. All over the country, older people are suddenly and inexplicably killing their loved ones. These people are the epitome of Mr and Mrs Average American. It gets serious when all 300 people in a small town in Wyoming are discovered murdered. The initial thought is that this is the beginning of a militia takeover of America. That is quickly dismissed when the phenomenon of people banding together and committing random acts of murder starts happening all over the world.

It is discovered that the phenomenon is spread by the Internet. A person doesn't have to go to any particular web site, just being on the Internet at all for even a couple of minutes is enough for anyone to be taken over. A national alert is broadcast, telling people to stay off the Internet, and attempts are made to shut it down, but no one can get to every corner of the Web.

The cause of the phenomenon is a hacker virus, which grew and mutated while on the Web. It combined with a very popular shoot-em-up computer game, then expanded to the point where it can recognize, and deal with, any attempt, anywhere, to stop it.

Matt and Lisa race against time in the Pentagon, practically the last safe place in America (the President is already in a safe bunker in Utah), to deal with the virus. While they are separated for a time, Lisa somehow gets infected and disappears. Matt has to find her without killing her (she certainly wants to kill him), while being the only one who can sit in front of a computer for any length of time to enter the proper anti-virus commands, due to his mind-control abilities.

This one is really good. It's eerily plausible, it's well done, it would make a great movie and about the last half of the book is one long roller coaster ride. The reader will never again look at the Internet in the same way. Political suspense fans will love it.