Monday 27 April 2009

URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: Patient Zero - Jonathan Maberry


BOOK BLURB:

'When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there's nothing wrong with my skills.' Police officer Joe Ledger, martial arts expert, ex-army, self-confessed brutal warrior is scared. The man he's just killed is the same man he killed a week ago. He never expected to see the man again, definitely not alive, and definitely not as part of the recruitment process for the hyper-secret government agency the Department for Military Sciences. But the DMS are scared too - they have word of a terrorist plot straight from a nightmare - a bid to spread a plague through America - a plague that kills its victims and turns them into zombies. Time is running out and Joe has shown he has the abilities they need to lead one of their field teams. And so begins a desperate three mission - to contain the zombie outbreaks, to break the terrorist cell responsible and to find the man in their own team who is selling them out to the terrorists. Patient Zero is astonishingly fast moving, incredibily violent and down-right terrifying thriller - a new breed of thriller of techo-thriller that plays on our fears of mad science.


REVIEW:

This is a bit of a strange tale as it blends beautifully action adventure with the supernatural as Jonathan allows a Romeroesque tale to run full throttle. Its fun, its got all the things that you just can’t wait to rip into with all the gusto of a Zombie trying to get an all you can eat brainfest and whilst its not high literature it really does tick the boxes and delivers what it says on the tin. It won’t require any heavy thinking which whilst some would see this as a bit of an upset, it was a huge relief as too many authors seem to think that you need to twist the hell out of a tale to get the full impact along with sale. Jonathan proves that keeping it simple will not only keep a happy reader but allows you the chance to enjoy it to the max and will be a tale I’ll put back into my reading cycle again shortly when I need a bit of light relief.

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