Virus Attack

Internet Detectives #7

by Michael Coleman

Communicating on the Internet leads six teenagers - three in England and three on different continents - into exciting and dangerous mysteries. The black widow computer virus is wreaking a trail of destruction on PCs across the globe, and at the centre of the web is Abbey School.

Genres: Childrens, Mystery

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Coleman was born in Forest Gate, a suburb in east London. Not long after he was born, his family moved a few miles east to Barking. At the time of his arrival, the area was just starting to recover from the damage it had received during World War II. He lived in a house on Bevan Avenue, named after Aneurin Bevan the architect of the National Health Service. He lived in that estate for 20 years. The area helped develop Coleman's love of sport due to the oblong shaped lanes of grass leading up the estate, which could be used as mini-stadiums. He pretended to play at various sporting events of the time, e.g. the Melbourne Olympics of 1956, the soccer Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, and the games at Lords Cricket ground. He still has medals he won for being school champion in the 100m sprint and the long jump. As said by Coleman himself "My information series Foul Football tries to convey some of the magic I felt about the game of soccer by relating the weird and wonderful history of the game and the personalities it has seen over the years. On the fiction side, my series about a junior soccer team called Angels FC tries to bring out the humour and sheer fun that you’ll find at the heart of the game when it’s played by youngsters who don’t even know how to spell the word cynicism." Coleman had his first children’s book published when he was 46 years of age. He has also said: "I didn't [want to become a writer] at first. I used to teach computer science at a university and my first book was a boring one about computers. I livened it up by putting a few jokes in. At the end I thought I'd try writing a few more things, but this time forgetting about the computers and concentrating on the jokes. After lots of failures I realised that youngsters enjoy jokes more than adults and started writing for them. Eighty books later, I'm still doing it...I write both fact and fiction. The Foul Football series are favourite fact books, simply because they're about football. On the fiction side, I'm just finishing a trilogy called The Bearkingdom. They're dark and scary, quite different to anything I've written before."

Reviews

[Rogerio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow, the first viruses were a sensation! Nowadays we don't even think about it anymore. Back then it was dangerous and thrilling!

[Chiara · Rating 5 out of 5]

What type of virus is a Black Widow on a computer? Rob has become a victim. The Abbey school computers are linked together and when Josh goes on computer, plays a game and the computer shuts down by itself. They call primeworks. They say that it is not a virus. When Rob gets home, he finds a letter waiting for him. It is called the Hourglass Of Horror. When Rob puts it in, it says it's greetings. Rob groans and tries to exit the program but it continues with the introduction and does not switch off. Soon the other people from the group also get it. Tamsyn just runs to school with the letter in hr hands and shows the others. Then Lauren King in Torronto, Canada says a riddle on the computer. The people at Abbey school sees what she means and goes to primeworks to find one of the officers. They think that it was one of he officers who did this but it was actually an exabbey pupil who planted it there while primeworks was there. She said in the Hourlgass Of Horror that it would bomb up the entire system at 6:00 on the 24 August 2016. The officer puts the time back an hour so that the bomb won't explode. Then Mr Findlay explains why she wanted to do that and why she got all angry and wanted to bomb up the entire system.