Here’s the second review on Virus, this from the Weekend Australian’s New Australian Fiction section. I take it as a positive and the crits I can wear, even if I don’t agree…

“FOR those who like getting out of the country, James Rose, among other things the founder of social justice-minded media company Random Ax, has debuted with Virus an intriguing big pharma conspiracy novel set in Uganda, Israel, Europe and America. While not in the league of John Le Carre’s A Constant Gardener, it’s still a cleverly wrought plot that straddles the tensions between the expectations of genre and the moral ambivalences of the actual world with aplomb.

Asher Fox has the unusual job of being an ethics detective. Basically this involves digging around companies to find out whether they are as good as they claim to be. He is hired by the charity Save the Innocent to investigate BioHor, a company the charity is planning to partner in a bid to find a cure for AIDs. Of course, things are not what they seem. BioHor becomes aware of Asher digging around and he is contacted by its sexy PR woman, Cal West, who is playing both sides of the fence. And Cal is not the only one.

Asher falls for Cal and gets drawn into a conspiracy that grows bigger by the minute. There are batches of punctured condoms, corporate skulduggery and, as the action heats up, guns, double-crossings and an American president with an unusual problem to deal with. The characters are a bit clunky but the plot zips along between its exotic locations”

Here’s the link