It is easy to see why it could be thrilling fiction for our times: it has a mysterious and fatal virus, an epidemiologist hero, a desperate search for a vaccine and murky political skullduggery. It also features a green monkey. But whether it is the moment for Stanley Johnson, the father of Boris Johnson, to be pushing his 40-year-old novel for a new release is another question. Nonetheless, British publishers have been invited to consider reissuing Johnson senior’s 1982 thriller The Marburg Virus, the Guardian has learned. His agent is so convinced of his ability to effectively publicise a reissue that his pitch describes him as “a tireless self-promoter”. Long out of print, the book is based on a real disease outbreak in Germany in the late 1960s. Johnson denied being opportunistic in wanting his novel to be made available again. “I’m a professional writer,” he said. “Is it opportunistic for journalists and newspapers to be writing about the coronavirus?” He pointed to his previous thrillers which have also tackled contemporary issues, including his latest book Kompromat, which tells a story of devious Russian influence on western politics. Johnson said his novel had a prescience, in that the plot was driven by the desperate need to find a vaccine. “I don’t think the novel is far fetched because look at what is happening now,” he said. The novel is a pacy environmental and medical adventure story involving illegal animal traders, corrupt pharmaceutical company bosses, the KGB and a US president desperate to come out on top. In Johnson’s story, the equivalent of Wuhan is New York, the virus breaks out at the Bronx zoo. Soon the rest of the world bans planes travelling from the US. The main characters are involved in a desperate attempt to track down a rare breed of green monkey, which was the source of the virus. Some subplots are more improbable than others. One involves the Brazilian head of the World Health Organization and his deputy, a sinister, monocle-wearing Russian with an upper-class English accent, travelling to the Congo to personally oversee the destruction of monkeys responsible for the virus … or so they thought. Johnson said there were lessons to be learned from his story because he thought more effort should be being made today to tracking down the source of the current pandemic. “Instead of focusing on the Wuhan ‘wet’ market, I think people should be looking for some release of the virus via an animal being used in the secretive Wuhan research laboratory,” he said, in remarks echoing Donald Trump’s so far unsubstantiated claim to have seen evidence that the virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Then of course the race will begin to find where the animal or batch of animals came from so that a world-saving vaccine can be developed in record time.” The pitch to UK publishers by Johnson’s literary agent, Jonathan Lloyd of Curtis Brown, urges publishers to purchase what he describes as “an unnervingly prophetic, intelligent thriller”. It continues: “When a young woman in New York City dies mysteriously after a trip to Europe, top epidemiologist Lowell Kaplan identifies the cause of death as the Marburg virus – a fatal strain that has surfaced only once before in history. “Determined to trace the source of the disease, Kaplan follows a trail of intrigue from the labs of Germany to the jungles of central Africa.” Lloyd is “looking for a publisher who can capitalise on the wonderful opportunity Stanley’s profile presents and make this urgent, exhilarating novel quickly available to his wide audience, at a time when it feels eerily prescient”, he writes. The pitch describes Johnson as “an excellent, tireless self-promoter” and it hopes publishers “can agree that this is an exciting opportunity to have this book back in print again (firstly as an e book)”. The book was published in the US in 2015 with the title The Virus but it remains to be seen whether UK publishers will bite. Johnson said Amazon was charging £57 for the paperback edition. “All the more reason to produce a new version now,” he said. “I do hope it happens … I had such fun writing it.” Reviews of the novel are sparse and mixed. On Goodreads coverage ranges from praise for its “breakneck action” to a less glowing response: “Made it about a third of the way through this before I got too annoyed with its stupidity and quit.” But another reader on the site noted the book’s possible prescience in 2015: “The scariest thing is, because we live in a scary world, I can totally envision every bit of it happening.” They also said they had received a copy directly from the author. ‘They made love in a brass four-poster bed’: extracts from The Marburg Virus Doctor Lowell Kaplan, Head of the Bureau of Epidemiology at the National Center for Disease Control at Atlanta, Georgia, was on the telephone to Japan. He sounded worried. He was worried. He pushed back a lock of thick greying hair which had fallen over his forehead and hunched forward as he spoke, the suppressed energy visible in every line of his body. “Okay,” he shouted into the phone. “It differs from A-Brazil, but does it have pandemic potential? That’s the question.” She pleaded with him. “Lowell, don’t go. Not now. I need you tonight.” They made love in a brass four-poster bed which Stephanie had bought in an antique shop off Les Halles when she first came to Paris. Kaplan stayed the night. They had breakfast in bed. Then, pushing the tray aside, they made love again. There was none of the urgency there had been the previous evening. It was though a dam had burst on a river. Now, after a temporary turbulence, the water was flowing smoothly again.” The President’s reaction, once he was informed of the crisis, was immediate. “Why in God’s name don’t we have a vaccine? You people” – he was addressing an emergency meeting of Federal and state health officials – “have a vaccine for polio and flu and whooping cough and even the goddam common cold. So why haven’t you got a vaccine for Marburg if it’s the deadliest disease known to man?”