This is the review for the book Patient Zero by Jonathon Maberry. I have just finished reading it for my book club. I will add my reviews of my book club books every month. 

                Well here we are, I have finished Patient Zero BY Jonathan Maberry . Honestly I didn’t think I would finish it. I have a few qualms, maybe that’s not the right word.  Let’s try issues, no, no I don’t like that either.  Maybe reservations, ya, I like that. So here I have a few, reservations about this lovely piece of modern zombie literature (am I stretching the word literature here?).

         

       We will work with the big three.

First and foremost, this reads like a movie. I actually think he was writing this book, yes as the beginning of a series, but also as a movie. I imagined Mr. Maberry sitting at home in front of his computer watching and re-watching 28 Days Later, or the Night of the Living Dead, I may have even felt a little of the movies series Resident Evil in there. I can picture him watching and re-watching these movies casting the roles in his head as he wrote them. I did. As I read this book I cast each and every role with a film actor. I don’t think I have ever done that with a book before. Sure there have been books I’ve read that have become movies, when that happens I may have a yes or no feeling about the acting choices made. In this case however I picked them out after 50 pages, I knew that if Mr.Maberry had his way I would be sifting this out of the $5 bin at Wal-Mart in 12 months.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d watch it, but I wouldn’t love it. It’s no Die Hard.

“I realized as I thought these things that this was one of the aftershocks of 9/11. For a while after that everything that could draw a crowd was canceled, but then our culture moved on and there were no more attacks. We became complacent. Maybe we even thought that, against all evidence, we really had Al Qaeda on the run and that we had taken the fight so effectively to them that we could settle back into normal life here in the States. Today we were paying the price for compliance. Did the blame belong to me? Church? Or was this a cultural failing? If I lived through the day I’d have to take a closer look at those questions; but social philosophy doesn’t help you in the heat of a firefight, so I pressed on. “

My next problem was the action scenes. Action scenes are something that I think Mr.Maberry does very well. I’m not saying that he should win the Pulitzer equivalent of the action scene writers award, if there is one of those, but I give credit where credit is due. In this case it is due. My problem is these weird additions to the actions scenes. Suddenly our hero Joe Ledger is thinking about the societal impacts this previously unknown prion disease will have on the world. Really? Why can’t he just kick some ass, take some names, and worry about that after he’s killed them all.  For example I have an excerpt here from one of the final chapters in the book (forgive my not having a page number, that is defiantly one of the drawbacks of an e-reader).

Does this actually make sense? Sure, it’s a solider forming his ideas on how he got to this stage in his life. Personally he, like the rest of the nation, was trying to put his world back together after a major shock to the community at large. But I will say this with vigor. Any man who is trained to kill in such a manner as Joe Ledger would NOT be thinking about this during a crucial gun battle. The First Lady was in the room at this point, the beginning of a brutal final plan to end the western world, and Joe Ledger... Joe freaking Ledger is thinking about the lax in societal safety concerns since 9/11. I’m sorry but give me a break.

My final issue, at least the final one I want to talk about now, is very personal. Why exactly are all seriously nefarious villains redheads? Please can someone other than Eric Cartman tell my why my people, who are endangered by the way, always get the brunt of the world of evil. Please allow me to paint a picture in facts for all of you non gingers (that’s right I claim that title as a title of empowerment and not degradation). We will begin with Children of the Corn an excellent horror movie that depicts the most violent and destructive of the children as being and evil redheaded child, then we have hilarious (sarcasm that please) jokes of Larry the Cabal Guy telling the world he was afraid of being beaten like a red-headed step child, and finally we have that lovely Victoria in Twilight.  Now generally I wouldn’t care but I have seen this evil redhead crap for long enough! Now I am suffering from an undercover evil redhead and an evil mastermind that disguises himself as a redhead. Enough is enough people.

 All in all I don’t dislike this book, I think I will even want to continue reading the series. I just hope that its gets a little more A movie than B movie.