The Hot Zone – A Bit Out-Dated yet a Thrilling Account of a Lethal Virus

“We don’t really know what Ebola has done in the past, and we don’t know what it might do in the future.”

Richard Preston’s 1994 non-fiction book The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story covers the outbreaks of Ebola in Africa (a deadly virus) and the virus' alarming outbreak at a monkey-house in Reston, Virginia in 1989. Named as Ebola Reston, the new virus strain found in a US laboratory was eerily similar to Ebola Zaire, which was first reported in Congo in 1977 (and from 2014 has ravaged across West and Central Africa killing thousands of people). Unlike the other pernicious Ebola viruses, the Reston virus caused only asymptomatic infections and couldn't cause disease in humans. The Hot Zone was often praised for its gripping narrative, which at times reads like a chilling horror literature. Of course, since it’s a twenty-five year old book, some of its portions are clearly outdated. Epidemiologists have also found problems with Preston’s amplified writing style and the way he supposedly twists the true nature of Ebola to keep the readers ‘terrified’, keeping up with the promise presented in the book title (the book was adapted into a six-part miniseries this year by Nat Geo channel).

The first two chapters of The Hot Zone are brilliantly written; the visceral account of what Ebola does to human body was so disturbing and scary to read. Although some of Preston’s choice of words to describe the people dying of Ebola (‘liquefy’, ‘bleeding out’) were criticized to have stoked sensationalism and unfounded fears (about the disease), the riveting prose keeps us wholly engrossed (provided you don’t take Preston’s description as the only clinically accurate version). The Hot Zone was written at a time when the general public had no knowledge of Ebola virus (even the scientific community was then coming into grips about the emerging, extremely deadly viruses) and some of the big fears addressed here were allayed over the years (like Ebola was ‘possibly airborne’).

 At the same time, the criticisms laid out against Preston’s book, for instance that it totally exaggerated the dangerous of Ebola in humans, were found to be misconception after the 2014-2016 West African Outbreak, which killed over 11,000 people. The current Ebola epidemic in Central Africa (particularly in Congo) that was first declared on August 1, 2018 has resulted in 1,700 deaths and counting. The vaccination and treatment efforts of the selfless doctors in Africa are also thwarted by the military conflicts in the region and the continent's lesser-developed healthcare system.

The Hot Zone has the undeniable quality of creeping us out (“Ebola Zaire attacks every organ and tissue in the human body except skeletal muscle and bone. It is a perfect parasite because it transforms virtually every part of the body into a digested slime of virus particles”). Although the origin of Ebola virus is still a mystery, Preston kicks up the scare factor by focusing a lot on the Kitum cave (in Mount Elgon National Park, Kenya). The author’s description of the place makes it seem preternatural, where invisible, primitive enemies are waiting to wreak havoc on the entire human race. Even Preston’s own journey into Kitum cave doesn’t reveal anything about Ebola. Similar to the vivid chronicle of Ebola symptoms in Charles Monet and Nurse Mayinga, the peek inside Kitum cave simply contains the power to terrify the readers, but adds nothing much from a scientific perspective.

Preston brings a much-needed interesting subtext into his ‘thrilling’ narrative late in the book, when he talks of deforestation of tropical rain forests and the aftermath of AIDS epidemic. “In a sense, the Earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of the concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions. Perhaps the biosphere does not 'like' the idea of five billion humans”, writes Preston, contextualizing how the rapidly enlarging host of deadly viruses is linked to human’s adversarial impact on environment.

Having finished The Hot Zone, I have now started to read David Quammen’s 2014 book ‘Ebola: the Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus’, which is said to be toned down and less dramatic than Preston’s book. Also, I am interested in reading Richard Preston’s updated follow-up to his 1994 book, Crisis in the Red Zone (published July 2019). 

 

The Dying Detective – An Unrelenting Sleuth and a Cold Case

"Make the best of what you’ve got, don’t complicate things unnecessarily, and hate coincidence."

Swedish crime author Leif GW Persson is a retired professor of criminology (and a renowned psychological profiler in Scandinavia). His fictions have won the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times and also the Glass Key Award (annual award given to crime novel authors of Nordic countries). The Dying Detective (published in 2010 and translated to English by Neil Smith) features his ageing sleuth Lars Martin Johansson, once head of the National Criminal Police and known as the hero-cop who could see around the corners, but now retired and bored of his passive existence. The 67-year-old Johansson’s beloved wife, Pia (twenty years younger than him) works at the bank, while he roams around the city chatting with his retired colleague and best friend, Bo Jarnebring, and business-minded big brother, Evert.

Early in the novel, when Johansson is about to bite into spicy sausage, he just bought from a hot-dog kiosk, he has a stroke. The alert police offers eating out at the hot-dog stand rushes him to hospital, where he is put under the care of Doctor Ulrich Stenholm, who is greatly concerned about his weak heart and high blood pressure. While the doctor advises Johansson to get more exercise and go for good, green food, she also kind of triggers Johansson’s dormant detective instincts. Dr. Stenholm tells Johansson about the 25-year-old unsolved rape and murder case of a 9-year-old girl named Yasmine Ermegan. The doctor is haunted by this cold case because she heard about some undisclosed details regarding Yasmine’s brutal murder, from her father in his death-bed. Johansson is immediately intrigued by the case, and calls his friend Jarnebring for help, who actually was in charge of investigation of Yasmine's murder case in 1985.

While lying in the hospital bed, Johansson goes through boxes of case files, piecing out all the little details surrounding the little girl's murder. His former colleagues at the force are happy that their former boss is on the case though the statute of limitations has run its course. The investigation is also related to Johansson’s physical and mental recovery. Upon returning home, he keeps up his appointment with physiotherapist and cardiologist although he has a tough time confirming to the strict diet. He sneaks up a meal stuffed with cream sauce, and furtively gulps a glass of vodka. He has to adjust himself by walking with the help of crutch, and put up with dizzy spells, random pains in the chest, etc.

A tattooed, impertinent care-taker, Matilda and a beefy helper, Max are appointed to take care of him. But Johansson uses them to run his errands on the case. Matilda helps Johansson with google searches, whereas Max drives him around for face-to-face interviews with people related to the case. Of course, Johansson finds the killer, but it only presents him with more problems and more stress. As Max says, his boss is a good man, but ‘an evil man was eating him from inside’.

The Dying Detective is the eighth book in the Johansson & Jarnebring series, which also briefly refers to the character of Evert Backstrom (a rude, irascible, and funny detective who is the chief character in a series of Persson’s novels). The title is a nod to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mycroft Holmes, the smarter older brother of Sherlock who solves mysteries without leaving his armchair. The novel is painstakingly detailed, balancing between unsavory, chilling details of the case and daily routines of the old detective after a near-death experience. Persson includes ample dose of black humor and social commentary to not get overwhelmed by the somber mood. The writing is very smooth and the interplay between characters is mostly entertaining. The novel doesn’t boast any great, unpredictable twists, but the very effective characterizations give the narrative a unique flair. The themes of justice and truth are well-handled; Johansson’s commitment to law is particularly fascinating. Once the killer’s identity is revealed, the book loses a bit of momentum. Yet the intriguing lead character keeps us engaged throughout.  

Death Notice – A Fairly Entertaining Chinese Crime Fiction that Lacks Finesse and Depth

Published in China in 2014 and sold over 1 million copies, Zhou Haohui’s crime thriller fiction, Death Notice was translated to English in 2018 (by Zac Haluza) and enjoyed great reception in the US, reserved in the recent years to high octane Scandinavian and Japanese crime fictions. Death Notice is the first installment in a trilogy of novels, which follows a team of detectives attempt to track down a highly intelligent vigilante, carrying the code name Eumenides (deities of vengeance in Greek mythology), who sends death notices to people he thinks have slipped through the hands of law.

The novel is set in the city of Chengdu in the year 2002. Eighteen years earlier (in 1984), police sergeant Zheng Haoming was part of a covert task force that investigated the murders of then Vice-Commissioner of Chengdu police, Xue Dalin and two police academy students. The students perished in an explosion, whereas the Vice-Commissioner was murdered in cold-blood. Death notices were found at the crime scene; the executor mentioning the punished ones’ crimes. The task force, however, has failed to nab the criminal and the crimes weren’t repeated. But in 2002, Zheng receives an anonymous message that makes him feel the killer has returned.

Few days later, Zheng is lying in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. He is found by Pei Tao, a captain stationed at a small county named Longzhou. Pei has received a message from Zheng, urging him to meet Zheng at his house. Interestingly, Pei like Zheng was connected to the 1984 murders. Initially a suspect, Pei was friends with the two students who died in the bomb explosion; one his lover Meng, and the other his best friend Yuan. The official version is that having first seen the death notice issued toYuan, Meng rushed to rescue him. While trying to defuse the bomb strapped to Yuan at an abandoned warehouse, they both died. However, there are few discrepancies and mysteries surrounding the case that has haunted Pei’s mind forever.

Meanwhile, the task force set to hunt down Eumenides is reformed, now headed by Captain Han Hou. Pei is also part of the team alongside Special Police Unit (SPU) captain Xiong, a geeky technology expert, and a gifted plus beautiful psychologist Mu Jinayun. This time around Eumenides get bold and start to directly challenge the police force. Unlike the 1984 murders, the vigilante gives his death notice in advance. He names the victim, their crimes, and the date he is gonna commit the act. Considering the resources at their disposal, the task force wonders about the validity of these notices. But they soon witness their enemies’ formidable nature and the meticulousness of his/her plans. As Eumenides’ elaborate plan for delivering justice begins to unfold the police just get stringed along.

The thrills of Death Notice are well conceived, although the language feels too cliched or unappealing at times (don’t know if the problem lies with translation). The novel doesn’t offer much of crime fiction tourism as in the novels of Keigo Higashino, Hideo Yokoyama, Jo Nesbo, Arnaldur Indridason, etc. The cultural descriptions are largely absent and social commentary rears its head now-and-then in the book with the story alternating between pent-houses of the rich and the dirty shacks of the poor. Nevertheless, the social commentary isn’t very specific to China. The justification provided by vigilante for his actions is very common and lacks depth (emotional or intellectual). 

Death Notice has got intriguing set-pieces. We feel the thrill when the police are left to run like the rat in a maze. But the revealed truths weren’t as convincing, since much of the characters here aren’t developed a bit. Everyone from Pei to Mu just remain as functional characters throughout. They do good bit of detective work, but there’s nothing to make us root for their survival. The logic and motive of the killer is also underdeveloped and sounds ridiculous.

Overall, Death Notice had a great start that made me wonder when the next two sequels will be released in English, but the later-half of the novel got rid of this eager anticipation I had for the sequels (still I hope the sequels are really good).

The Good Son – A Harrowing, Character-Driven Mystery/Thriller

“There are some people you just can’t love. Even when they smile, they make you want to pull on either side of that smile and rip their mouth off.”

Twenty-five-year old Yu-jin wakes up with ‘the smell of blood’. He soon finds that he is covered in blood (whose?), and there are bloody footprints all over his room. Yu-jin is epileptic and has taken meds from his childhood. But when he voluntarily skips the meds, to fend off numbness (drugs’ side-effects), he suffers from seizure and memory loss. He remembers sneaking from his room after 11 pm to go for a run. Everything else is a blank. Yu-jin slowly staggers downstairs only to discover his mother’s body, throat slashed from one end to the other. He delves into his muddled thoughts to figure out what had really happened, since all signs suggest that he is his mother’s killer. The question ‘why’ hangs in the air, alongside the smell of blood as Yu-jin begins the quest to find out the murderer. And what he finds pushes him further to sift through his mother’s secrets and uncover the true nature of his identity.

Korean novelist Jeong You-jeong’s, The Good Son (originally published in 2016, translated to English by Kim Chi-young in 2018) opens with such an interesting premise. It’s a very cleverly constructed thriller that unfolds within small space (a triplex apartment) and a handful of characters. The author also brilliantly uses the time-worn technique of unreliable narrator. Here the narrator (Yu-jin) has the most unreliable memory and the past he pieces through his mother’s journals is also fragmented and doesn’t clearly assess the truth in a situation. You-jeong’s story demands little suspension of disbelief, and in turn she steadily guides us deeper into Yu-jin darker psyche.

Frequent readers of crime thrillers can easily predict the twists, but the narrative structure also doubles up as a character study. Yu-jin’s relentless inquiry of his self makes the book truly unputdownable. The novel puts us in a preoccupied position that you just want to keep turning the next page and take one step closer to the answers. In stories featuring psychopath, you’d always witness some people acting like fools to give the anti-hero a chance to evade their grim fate. As The Good Son moves toward the ending, we get a bit annoyed by the utter foolishness of a certain character, which culminates into a predictably dark resolution. Otherwise, The Good Son is a devastating read, a gripping psychological thriller exploring the darkest recesses of a disturbed individual.