Analyzing Kathy Reichs 'Virals'

Phani Rayapaneni
Mrs. Wheaton
Period 1
17 November 2014 Virals is a murder mystery written by Kathy Reichs, where a group of teens take a journey to Cole Island and solve the murder of Katherine Heaton. Katherine’s interest in wildlife-conservation pushed her to pursue further with conducting a search on Cole Island. Her research was a success there when she found a family of endangered eagles. It may have been luck for her but this was threatening to the owners of Cole Island. As a result she was unfortunately tracked down and murdered before she could spread the word about the eagles to anyone. After she was killed her body was buried away at the research center, Loggerhead Island. Now coming back to the group of teens: Tory, Hiram, Shelton,
Tory comes to find out that the wolf-dogs were last spotted on the Loggerhead Island and she therefore suggests to her group of friends to look for them there with her. Tory then suddenly has a flashback to a memory when she picked up a wolf-dog from a deep hole, saving his life, and named him Coop. Once she is back to reality she talks about Coop with her friends and they tell her that Coop has gone missing for a long time now. The group packs their equipment to go searching late at night on the Loggerhead Island. Tory then stumbles upon a man named Dr. Karsten who viciously warned the group to stay away from the restricted areas on the island. As an obvious response to this bellowing Hiram, Shelton, and Ben agree to stop the search with the fear of being in bigger trouble. Although Tory just refused to leave and explains to them that the researcher only wanted them to step away from the restricted areas and not off the island. With a clear explanation of the terms of the warning she manages to convince the rest of the group to stay and search with her. Continuing onto a path leading them deeper into the island Tory suddenly acts like a dog and throws something at Hiram. Hiram picks up the
Tory and Shelton devise a plan to break into Dr. Karsten’s lab and use the sonicator to make out the dog tag. Once they break in and clean it, Ben shows the rest of the group the security door upstairs. They are all surprised to hear a dog barking inside and instantly want to break into this door as well but there was no lock to be broken. There is an access code to go in and after an hour they go in to find out that it was Coop. He was trapped on a bed with her legs chained and a collar around his neck and hooked to many intravenous tubes that were experimenting on him. Their hearts tore immediately to see the dog in such a bad condition and they quickly break him loose. As the teens start to help the dog get better they catch the Parvovirus from the dog. This virus creates an infectious disease that affects both dogs and humans. The first sign of the teens having the disease were their heightened animal behaviors. Disregarding that they have the disease they are dogged to find out that Katherine was the owner from the information given by the dog tag. The team connects the fact that Katherine was missing for a few years and as they traveled