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השליחה
שני גיבורים לא שגרתיים, אויבי המדינה, יוצאים למסע ומקווים לסגור חשבון.
לדריה, שגדלה בעוני ובחוסר כול, שטפו את המוח, הקנו כלים, ועכשיו היא נשק קטלני, חץ שלוח אל המטרה.
את ד"ר סאם ווטרמן הממשלה זרקה לכלבים אחרי שמצא פתרון לבעיה שהשלטונות בחרו להתעלם ממנה. עכשיו אותה ממשלה מבקשת ממנו למצוא פתרון שיציל את חייהם של מיליונים.
בשישה-עשר הימים הבאים דריה תלמד להטיל ספק במה שלימדו אותה, וסאם יכיר את הפנים שמאחורי הרוע. משני צדי המתרס ישפיעו סאם ודריה על גורל הגזע האנושי, כשבמהלך המסע המקביל שלהם יגלו לא רק מה משמעות דרך החיים שבחרו, אלא גם בשביל מה הם מוכנים למות.
לדריה, שגדלה בעוני ובחוסר כול, שטפו את המוח, הקנו כלים, ועכשיו היא נשק קטלני, חץ שלוח אל המטרה.
את ד"ר סאם ווטרמן הממשלה זרקה לכלבים אחרי שמצא פתרון לבעיה שהשלטונות בחרו להתעלם ממנה. עכשיו אותה ממשלה מבקשת ממנו למצוא פתרון שיציל את חייהם של מיליונים.
בשישה-עשר הימים הבאים דריה תלמד להטיל ספק במה שלימדו אותה, וסאם יכיר את הפנים שמאחורי הרוע. משני צדי המתרס ישפיעו סאם ודריה על גורל הגזע האנושי, כשבמהלך המסע המקביל שלהם יגלו לא רק מה משמעות דרך החיים שבחרו, אלא גם בשביל מה הם מוכנים למות.
352 pages, Paperback
First published July 3, 2012
7 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 26, 2018
A highly entertaining book about bioterrorism told alternatively from the POV of the young girl recruited to spread the virus, and a scientist recruited to stop it.
August 21, 2012
The most frightening part of the terrific new terrorist thriller by Stephen Miller is not the deadly premise he has created but the very ‘real’ information included in the Sources and Acknowledgements at the back of the book:
“THE MESSENGER is fiction but is not fantasy. Bioterror is not only possible, it is cheap, technologically feasible, and, in its opening stages, almost undetectable. That a large-scale bioterror attack has not yet occurred in North America is simply good luck.”
Wow! If I had read only that I would have been hooked. Thankfully, Stephen Miller has much more up his sleeve with this non-stop work of sheer terror that grabs you by the throat on the opening pages and never lets you up for air.
A young Italian national named Daria is selected for a deadly mission. Raised in a refugee camp and bounced around by a terrorist organization with full intent on making her a martyr, Daria has no idea what she is about to do. All she knows is that she has been injected with an untraceable and nearly indestructible form of small-pox and put on a flight to NYC. Using false passports and documentation claiming her to be a reporter for a European teen magazine named Klic!, Daria receives carte blanche and is welcomed to the U.S. with open arms.
Opposing her is a gristled scientist who had a major falling out with the U.S. Government --- the same Government personnel that are not begging him to assist in stopping what appears to be the most massive bioterrorism attack on U.S. soil ever perpetrated. The terrorists recognize that bombs and rogue airplanes crashing into buildings will send a message. However, sending in a human being brimming with a deadly virus produces a ticking time bomb that can do far worse damage.
The scientist in question, Dr. Sam Watterman, reluctantly agrees to help only because the results of early bioterror attacks have piqued his interest. Even though he was disgraced in the post 9/11 anthrax scares he is willing to put his pride aside to save his country and maybe the entire western world.
Daria meanwhile is unsure of her mission and growing sicker by the minute from the toxic smallpox pulsing through her body. All she knows is that she is to interact with as many people as possible --- spreading infection along the way. She treks from NYC to different parts of the country and even makes friends during her mission. This puts her at a moral cross-roads but one that she has no power to turn back from. As a member of what has been called the Berlin Plague, she and her fellow bioterror subjects are on the top of the FEMA and Homeland Security hit list. It is only a showdown in a desolate part of the southwestern desert with Dr. Sam Watterman that Daria faces her own mortality and any opportunity for salvation may be lost forever.
Stephen Miller, a successful novelist and part-time actor, has created a uniquely terrifying novel that will shake the foundation of anyone living in the ‘free world’. THE MESSENGER delivers!
Reviewed by Ray Palen for New Mystery Reader
“THE MESSENGER is fiction but is not fantasy. Bioterror is not only possible, it is cheap, technologically feasible, and, in its opening stages, almost undetectable. That a large-scale bioterror attack has not yet occurred in North America is simply good luck.”
Wow! If I had read only that I would have been hooked. Thankfully, Stephen Miller has much more up his sleeve with this non-stop work of sheer terror that grabs you by the throat on the opening pages and never lets you up for air.
A young Italian national named Daria is selected for a deadly mission. Raised in a refugee camp and bounced around by a terrorist organization with full intent on making her a martyr, Daria has no idea what she is about to do. All she knows is that she has been injected with an untraceable and nearly indestructible form of small-pox and put on a flight to NYC. Using false passports and documentation claiming her to be a reporter for a European teen magazine named Klic!, Daria receives carte blanche and is welcomed to the U.S. with open arms.
Opposing her is a gristled scientist who had a major falling out with the U.S. Government --- the same Government personnel that are not begging him to assist in stopping what appears to be the most massive bioterrorism attack on U.S. soil ever perpetrated. The terrorists recognize that bombs and rogue airplanes crashing into buildings will send a message. However, sending in a human being brimming with a deadly virus produces a ticking time bomb that can do far worse damage.
The scientist in question, Dr. Sam Watterman, reluctantly agrees to help only because the results of early bioterror attacks have piqued his interest. Even though he was disgraced in the post 9/11 anthrax scares he is willing to put his pride aside to save his country and maybe the entire western world.
Daria meanwhile is unsure of her mission and growing sicker by the minute from the toxic smallpox pulsing through her body. All she knows is that she is to interact with as many people as possible --- spreading infection along the way. She treks from NYC to different parts of the country and even makes friends during her mission. This puts her at a moral cross-roads but one that she has no power to turn back from. As a member of what has been called the Berlin Plague, she and her fellow bioterror subjects are on the top of the FEMA and Homeland Security hit list. It is only a showdown in a desolate part of the southwestern desert with Dr. Sam Watterman that Daria faces her own mortality and any opportunity for salvation may be lost forever.
Stephen Miller, a successful novelist and part-time actor, has created a uniquely terrifying novel that will shake the foundation of anyone living in the ‘free world’. THE MESSENGER delivers!
Reviewed by Ray Palen for New Mystery Reader
February 14, 2018
The Messenger
By Stephen Miller
Big mistake-to read this book during the flu epidemic in America! Apocalyptic books come in a wide variety of plots, but with this flu season, I found myself in the middle of both this book and my declining health -not good. At times I was too ill to even read and that lengthened the story, when I just wanted to know how it would end.
Miller creates characters, both with so much hate as in the young girl spreading the pandemic and others with love and gentleness willing to aid a pregnant mother and her newborn. The friendship between two young Russian women escaping from human trafficking brings us to a precarious situation. Should one tell the other or just leave. Amidst this, the US government is attempting to track the young perpetrator and analyze the virus to try to make a vaccination to help people. The information provided about viruses was extremely interesting and fascinating, and it made me more aware of how casual I was in touching counters, chairs, handles…. Antibacterial wipes here I come!
By Stephen Miller
Big mistake-to read this book during the flu epidemic in America! Apocalyptic books come in a wide variety of plots, but with this flu season, I found myself in the middle of both this book and my declining health -not good. At times I was too ill to even read and that lengthened the story, when I just wanted to know how it would end.
Miller creates characters, both with so much hate as in the young girl spreading the pandemic and others with love and gentleness willing to aid a pregnant mother and her newborn. The friendship between two young Russian women escaping from human trafficking brings us to a precarious situation. Should one tell the other or just leave. Amidst this, the US government is attempting to track the young perpetrator and analyze the virus to try to make a vaccination to help people. The information provided about viruses was extremely interesting and fascinating, and it made me more aware of how casual I was in touching counters, chairs, handles…. Antibacterial wipes here I come!
December 9, 2017
Why is this book already out of print??? I had to get a second-hand copy from the Wellfleet, MA Public Library! I would have much preferred my money go to the author. Bah.
This is a terrific, gripping story, deeply believable, about a bio-terrorism attack on the US, mostly told from the point of view of the terrorist herself, which makes it exquisitely poignant.
I note some other reviewers didn't care for the ending, but I thought it was perfect. Very well done, a super page-turner, leaving the reader with much to think about
This is a terrific, gripping story, deeply believable, about a bio-terrorism attack on the US, mostly told from the point of view of the terrorist herself, which makes it exquisitely poignant.
I note some other reviewers didn't care for the ending, but I thought it was perfect. Very well done, a super page-turner, leaving the reader with much to think about
January 26, 2019
Interesting story line but at some points just too many details/ descriptions you just start skimming through.
I think it was a great idea to have varying viewpoints in the story but the charters don’t tie in well together. Also, some of the sub plots just seem insignificant to the rest of the story.
I think it was a great idea to have varying viewpoints in the story but the charters don’t tie in well together. Also, some of the sub plots just seem insignificant to the rest of the story.
June 27, 2025
Took me time to finish this one.
Is it heavy? Idk maybe to some extent.
Enjoyable? Perhaps for some people.
But it serves its point and makes you really think about life, not just wonder. It makes you see both sides, all sides. There’s no judgement after reading this.
Is it heavy? Idk maybe to some extent.
Enjoyable? Perhaps for some people.
But it serves its point and makes you really think about life, not just wonder. It makes you see both sides, all sides. There’s no judgement after reading this.
November 21, 2022
Interesting story following a terrorist through her journey.
November 29, 2012
First Line: If they were to make a feature film of her life, the script would always be trying to map the source of her flawed personality.
Daria, a survivor from a refugee camp, has lost everything and witnessed things that you and I could only imagine in our worst nightmares. She is a believer. Committing herself to a deadly mission, she is sent to another country where she learns languages and learns how to blend in. When her training is over, she's given a ticket to New York City where she poses as a journalist for an Italian fluff magazine. Daria is an arrow who's determined to strike as many targets as she possibly can.
The only person in the United States who truly seems to understand what Daria represents is Dr. Sam Watterman. After being falsely accused and disgraced in the anthrax inquiries after 9/11, Watterman has been taking care of his dying wife. Now the government that vilified him demands his expertise in locating a threat that has put millions in danger.
These two people's lives are destined to intersect. Their faith will be tested, and each one of them will question what it is to have something worth dying for.
Stephen Miller does something that most people might think impossible: create a character who is a committed terrorist and not only give that character a face, a mind, and a heart but make her-- if not totally sympathetic-- at least understandable and worthy of compassion. Daria has been turned into a "Typhoid Mary," and her travels across the country serve a dual purpose. One, since the reader knows that she carries a deadly contagion, this ratchets up the tension, and as she carries out her instructions, don't be surprised if you change your habits on board airplanes, in restaurants, restrooms... any sort of high traffic public areas. Secondly, these travels bring her in contact with many people, and we are able to see how she reacts to them and how her behavior begins to change.
Daria is such a strong character that Dr. Sam Watterman is almost completely overshadowed by her. Yes, the book does need someone to steer government officials in the right direction and to have them search in the right places and handle the situation in as safe a manner as possible, but Daria is magnetic. I felt the book might've been even better if Daria's hunter had been more "generic". Then Daria's evolving character could have been explored even more deeply. What I would really enjoy seeing is a future book that gives Dr. Sam Watterman a chance to have center stage all to himself. He deserves it.
This is the type of thriller that I enjoy the most: fast-paced, with an all-too-believable plot, and strong, memorable characters. Something tells me I'll be reading more of Stephen Miller's books.
Daria, a survivor from a refugee camp, has lost everything and witnessed things that you and I could only imagine in our worst nightmares. She is a believer. Committing herself to a deadly mission, she is sent to another country where she learns languages and learns how to blend in. When her training is over, she's given a ticket to New York City where she poses as a journalist for an Italian fluff magazine. Daria is an arrow who's determined to strike as many targets as she possibly can.
The only person in the United States who truly seems to understand what Daria represents is Dr. Sam Watterman. After being falsely accused and disgraced in the anthrax inquiries after 9/11, Watterman has been taking care of his dying wife. Now the government that vilified him demands his expertise in locating a threat that has put millions in danger.
These two people's lives are destined to intersect. Their faith will be tested, and each one of them will question what it is to have something worth dying for.
Stephen Miller does something that most people might think impossible: create a character who is a committed terrorist and not only give that character a face, a mind, and a heart but make her-- if not totally sympathetic-- at least understandable and worthy of compassion. Daria has been turned into a "Typhoid Mary," and her travels across the country serve a dual purpose. One, since the reader knows that she carries a deadly contagion, this ratchets up the tension, and as she carries out her instructions, don't be surprised if you change your habits on board airplanes, in restaurants, restrooms... any sort of high traffic public areas. Secondly, these travels bring her in contact with many people, and we are able to see how she reacts to them and how her behavior begins to change.
Daria is such a strong character that Dr. Sam Watterman is almost completely overshadowed by her. Yes, the book does need someone to steer government officials in the right direction and to have them search in the right places and handle the situation in as safe a manner as possible, but Daria is magnetic. I felt the book might've been even better if Daria's hunter had been more "generic". Then Daria's evolving character could have been explored even more deeply. What I would really enjoy seeing is a future book that gives Dr. Sam Watterman a chance to have center stage all to himself. He deserves it.
This is the type of thriller that I enjoy the most: fast-paced, with an all-too-believable plot, and strong, memorable characters. Something tells me I'll be reading more of Stephen Miller's books.
May 3, 2015
Książka ,,Wysłanniczka" zaciekawiła mnie odkąd przeczytałam jej opis w internecie. Terroryzm biologiczny wydał się dla mnie ciekawym temat na stworzenie porywającego thrillera. Muszę przyznać, że sporo oczekiwałam od tej pozycji i to był mój błąd, gdyż przez to odrobinę mnie ona zawiodła.
Spodziewałam się porywającego thrillera, otrzymałam jednak książkę bardziej stonowaną. Wydarzenia głównie krążyły wokół tego, jak nasza bohaterka rozprowadzała wirus przemieszczając się w różne miejsca. Nie powiem, że książka jest nudna. W swój sposób nawet mnie zaciekawiła. Darię, naszą terrorystkę, nawet polubiłam, było w niej coś takiego, że w pewnych chwilach trochę jej współczułam, a przecież to ona robiła wszystko by jak największą ilość ludzi zmarła. Jednak początkowo myślałam, że bardziej wciągnie mnie do swojego świata, w którym z kolei życie mogło być bardziej niebezpieczne.
Jeśli poszukujecie pełnego zwrotów akcji thrillera pokazującego niebezpieczeństwo wynikające z rozpowszechniania wirusa ospy to raczej tutaj tego nie otrzymacie. Jednak nie jest źle. Kilka razy można nawet poczuć dreszczyk emocji. Same przyglądanie się podłemu planowi, jakim jest zagłada ludzkości z wykorzystaniem broni biologicznej może się okazać w pewny sposób interesująca przygodą. Dla mnie taka była, lecz niestety tylko ciekawa, a chciałabym, aby zapiera mi dech w piersiach.
Spodziewałam się porywającego thrillera, otrzymałam jednak książkę bardziej stonowaną. Wydarzenia głównie krążyły wokół tego, jak nasza bohaterka rozprowadzała wirus przemieszczając się w różne miejsca. Nie powiem, że książka jest nudna. W swój sposób nawet mnie zaciekawiła. Darię, naszą terrorystkę, nawet polubiłam, było w niej coś takiego, że w pewnych chwilach trochę jej współczułam, a przecież to ona robiła wszystko by jak największą ilość ludzi zmarła. Jednak początkowo myślałam, że bardziej wciągnie mnie do swojego świata, w którym z kolei życie mogło być bardziej niebezpieczne.
Jeśli poszukujecie pełnego zwrotów akcji thrillera pokazującego niebezpieczeństwo wynikające z rozpowszechniania wirusa ospy to raczej tutaj tego nie otrzymacie. Jednak nie jest źle. Kilka razy można nawet poczuć dreszczyk emocji. Same przyglądanie się podłemu planowi, jakim jest zagłada ludzkości z wykorzystaniem broni biologicznej może się okazać w pewny sposób interesująca przygodą. Dla mnie taka była, lecz niestety tylko ciekawa, a chciałabym, aby zapiera mi dech w piersiach.
November 30, 2016
Obok rewelacyjnie nakreślonych postaci, w powieści czuć przebijającą się przez treść krytykę zachodniego stylu życia, wszechobecnego konsumpcjonizmu i reklam. Pośpiech, brak empatii do drugiego człowieka, myślenie tylko w kategoriach własnego „ja”. To społeczeństwo podejrzliwe, wręcz nietolerancyjne w stosunku do osób o innym kolorze skóry, innym wyznaniu, które jednakże nie potrafi sobie poradzić w sytuacji kryzysowej.
Całość na: http://wiedzma-czyta.blogspot.com/201...
Całość na: http://wiedzma-czyta.blogspot.com/201...
December 28, 2012
Suspense filled novel about germ warfare in contemporary America. Alternately told from the points of view of a young woman recruited and trained as a terrorist, and an older scientist, falsely accused in anthrax inquiries, now forced by the U.S. government to locate the germ threatening millions of Americans.
September 21, 2012
Sept 15th to 18th
Not great - Couldnt finish it.
Usually I dont rate books I dont finish but this one was just good enought to read half way through so I felt it deserved a rating. The book bored me but I kept thinking it would get better - it didnt.Vey forgetable.
Not great - Couldnt finish it.
Usually I dont rate books I dont finish but this one was just good enought to read half way through so I felt it deserved a rating. The book bored me but I kept thinking it would get better - it didnt.Vey forgetable.
May 1, 2013
Picked this up at the library because it sounded interesting. It was a decent read but I wanted more back story on the characters, especially Daria. I did have to set this book aside for a bit after the Boston bombings because the books seemed far to plausible at that point.
August 22, 2012
This was a very good book.
October 6, 2012
Daria seemed more like an American teenage girl than an avowed terrorist. What country she is from is never explained. Still, Messenger is an absorbing read
September 27, 2013
Very frustrating. An excellent beginning, a clever idea, and a very poor conclusion.
June 7, 2015
Fast read and the plot was oh so believable. Scary. Some of the paragraphs about the government were a little dull and easy to skip over but the main character was an intense read. Great book!!
April 14, 2016
did not like subject . . . creeped me out.
Read
September 12, 2017Enjoyed this book although scary to think of this happening and the aftermath.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews