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For more anthrax beach reading, and practice separating fact from fiction, there is NOWHERE TO RUN, by Mary Jane Clark.

The anthrax suspense novel adopts my view that product can be made, for example, by a dairy processor (and then repeated centrifugation and sequential filtering).

one death follows another, Annabelle’s co-workers look to her for assurance, but she finds it hard to give comfort. To her, the circumstances surrounding the infections suggest diabolical murders.
THERE’S NOWHERE TO RUN
And when the authorities lock down the Broadcast Center, with the identity of the killer still unknown, neither victims nor the murderer can escape...

“Everyone is a suspect...
Everyone has a motive...
Everyone is in danger...”

WHEN THERE’S NO ONE TO TRUST...

Anthrax, smallpox, plague: as medical producer for television’s highly rated morning news program, Annabelle Murphy makes her living explaining horrific conditions to the nation. So when a KEY News Colleague dies with symptoms terrifyingly similar to those of anthrax, she knows the panic spreading through the corridors of the Broadcast Center is justified.

AND NO ONE IS SAFE...

“Annabelle had been working her tail off to prove herself and satisfy [her boss’s] directive to ‘make bioterrorism sexy. Seduce me. Tell me why I should care and what I can do to save myself. Keep me and all the mommies at home riveted to our television sets lest our babies lose their lives.’ With those twisted marching orders, Annabelle had been forced to be come all too knowledgeable about botulism, smallpox, tularemia, and plague.”

***
[broadcast]

As she cracked eggs over the rim of a stainless-steel mixing bowl, Annabelle listed to Constance’s introduction.

“Now in our continuing series ‘What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism,’ KEY News Medical Correspondent Dr. John Lee reports this morning on anthrax. You may be surprised at what he’s found.”

“Purifying and concentrating the anthrax spores and weaponizing them, causing the anthrax spores and weaponizing them, causing those purified spores to separate so they can linger in the air and be inhaled,, requires real laboratory skill. There is no way to account for all the anthrax strains that exist. Hundreds of scientists and technicians can get ahold of anthrax, and they know how to weaponize it.”

The medical correspondent paused to rest his hand on a piece of machinery on the lab bench. “One of the steps in making the powdered, airy form of anthrax is freeze-drying the spores. A tabletop freeze dryer can be purchased for under eight thousand dollars. So you see, the notion that only a state-sponsored biological weapons program could produce weapons-grade anthrax is a misconception.”

***

As the report ended, Thomas came out of the bedroom shoes in hand. Annabelle bend down to tie his sneaker but looked up in time to catch Dr. Lee, live on the set, holding up a tiny vial of white powder.

“Constance, we’d all like to think that anthrax is so dangerous, so deadly, that it must be well guarded, impossible, we hope, for anyone with evil intentions to get his hands on. But what I have here is a test tube containing weapons-grade anthrax. I can’t tell you how I got it, but if I could get it, so could other people. This is a weapon you can use and you can hide.”

Annabelle watched openmouthed, not believing what she was seeing. The camera closed in the vial, then pulled back to Constance, who shrank back in her seat acrsoss fromt eh medical correspondent.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” asked Thomas.

“Nothing sweetie. But Daddy is going to have to get up and walk you guys to school this morning. Mommy has to get in to work.”

[By Chapter 36, after some initial excitement that the diaper advertising sponsor might not approve of the segment, it is revealed that the producer was just holding run-of-the-mill confectioner’s sugar. ]

But then the news correspondent who perpetrated the hoax is arrested for the death of the broadcast colleague and food service worker.

“The dexterity in keeping so many guilty-looking characters afloat at once and the revelation of a truly surprising killer makes Clark’s sixth dispatch from KEY News her best — Kirkus Reviews.

Who is guilty?

Was it the fabulist Frenchman who consulted with the network on terrorism issues and helped frame the fabulist biodefense insider?

Was it the militant islamists represented by the lawyer who first concocted the biodefense insider theory and sought to blame the Administration for the anthrax mailings (as much of the muslim world and fringe in the US does for 9/11)?

Was it the neo-Salafist microbiology PhD — preaching on the coming End of Times while working on classified work for the Navy, who had access to a device that concentrated and sequentially filtered small anthrax samples?

Or was it the colleague down the hall?