Olduvai Countdown

About the Book

Olduvai Countdown, a compelling medical thriller in the tradition of Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, and Michael Palmer, tells the story of Jack Cann, a world-renown virologist, tired of navigating the arcane politics of a highbrow Ivy League school, who returns to his Midwestern Kansas roots to lead the quiet life of a university professor. His Utopian plan is interrupted when an African village in the Olduvai region of Africa is consumed by death in a few hours. This isolated incident in a remote region devolves into worldwide chaos as death sweeps across Africa like a Serengeti grass fire. Jack and his Asian-American wife, anthropologist Marla Qui, lead a team from the CDC trying desperately to identify the malady—a suspected genetically-mutated virus created by the North Koreans—and find a cure before it decimates the Western Hemisphere. What they discover is more terrifying than any virus: a lethal genetic mutation present since the dawn of evolution that threatens all of civilization and leaves them racing against the clock to save their own lives.

About the Author

Michael Woods, MD, is a board-certified general surgeon and healthcare consultant living in Connecticut. He attended the University of Kansas where he majored in Cellular Biology, was a researcher in a virus lab, and minored in anthropology. Tiring of the practice and politics of medicine, he became a researcher at a major pharmaceutical company, where he became the global medical leader of a worldwide drug development program. His background in anthropology, combined with his broad knowledge and experience in clinical and research medicine and extensive travel provides the basis for Olduvai Countdown. Michael is a well-known author in the medical trade press, having written and published four non-fiction books, including Healing Words, which has sold more than 20,000 copies.