I read this book several years ago and enjoyed it, but with the current political situation and the "threat of terror" that we are reminded of on a daily basis, I thought I'd recommend this to others. It's fiction, of course, but close enough to reality to make us all think twice about it. Here's a snippet from the review.

This particular jaunt into "mainstream, commercial, technothriller-type fiction" takes us back to the days leading up to the Gulf War, when Saddam was our friend basically because he wasn't Iranian. And the plot revolves around -- don't worry, I'm not giving away anything you won't get from the marketing text on the dust jacket -- Iraqi scientists using student visa's to get access to leading American educational institutions, where they can work on biological weapons which they then plan to use on us and our allies. Nasty. But then again, that is why we went to war with them.

The main characters are Clyde Banks, a small town deputy sheriff who's campaigning to replace his boss in an upcoming election (and who has a pregnant wife in the National Guard destined to go guess where), and dowdy CIA analyst Betsy Vandeventer. The small town the sheriff lives in also happens to be home to Eastern Iowa University which, sitting square in the American heartland as it does, specializes in agricultural science, a veritable magnet for Iraqi biological weapons specialists.

The SF Site Featured Review: The Cobweb by Stephen Bury