Pandemic by Daniel Kalla
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'The clinical syndrome is worse than SARS,' he said. 'Infected patients develop a sudden severe pneumonia often leading to multi-organ failure and death in a couple of days. Sometimes faster. And it's an ugly death, too. [...]'"

The coronavirus is first found in China, then it spreads all over the world. The virus does extreme damage to lungs of many infected patients. Some patients survive thanks to ventilators. Why am I repeating things about Covid-19 that everybody knows and is tired of? Because the thriller Pandemic was published quite some time ago, in 2005, and does not deal with Covid-19 but with the fictitious coronavirus that causes ARCS, Acute Respiratory Collapse Syndrome, and is much more deadly than the worst flu.

The author of Pandemic, Daniel Kalla, is an actual MD, and the medical aspects of the novel seem to be portrayed realistically. The story is extremely prophetic and predicts events to happen 15 years in the future (from 2005 to 2020) with incredible accuracy.

Alas, the novel also contains a thriller layer: the virus is used as a weapon by a Middle Eastern terrorist organization. They acquire blood from a dying patient in China. Don't ask me how they get the blood from the patient, read the book. Just a little teaser:

"The gurgling amplified, and drool formed at the open end of the tube. The patient writhed on the bed [...] He coughed in frequent spasms. With each cough, bloody sputum sprayed from the tube's end."

The entire terrorist plot is cliché, predictable, and grossly implausible. Grossly, I mean it.

Yet this is not the worst thing about the novel. It is mainly doomed by its "human-interest story," one of the most laughably cliché stories I have ever read. This is a colossal pile of c..p including such "literary devices" as marital problems, the use of sodium pentothal, the "truth serum", "confused" sexuality, coincidences heaped on top of coincidences supported by coincidences, and - most ridiculously - James Bond-style exploits performed not only by medical school professors but also by division directors in Homeland Security Department.

Virtually all characterizations are paper-thin. From the very first pages of the novel it is obvious that the protagonists are literary characters who have nothing in common at all with real people. Absolutely worst is Dr. Duncan MacLeod, a "gangly Scottish virologist" and "emerging pathogen expert", who says "Shite!" virtually every time he speaks, and is always loud and obnoxious.

Five stars for the prophetic setup and plausible medical background of the story. 0 stars for the rest. The average yields

Two-and-a-half stars.

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