The Andromeda Strain

The Andromeda Strain, was written by Michael Crichton and published in 1969.  Alien virus lands on earth, is lethal, team of scientists do the CSI in the CDC, much suspense and drama for a novel that reads like a biology textbook, you know how it ends cos we're still here...nice try, virus.

The book was sci-fi of the hard kind:  hard science and hard to stop reading.  There is a film; here's a picture from it: