The First Horseman - Softcover

Case, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345435796 ISBN 13: 9780345435798

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1999

Synopsis

On the Norwegian sea, an icebreaker forges its way through frozen waters to a remote island in the Arctic, carrying a scientific team that hopes to unearth the bodies of long-dead miners. Washington Post reporter Frank Daly has the story of a lifetime. But his plan to join the scientists on their historic mission is ruined by a ferocious storm. When he meets up with the ship upon its return to port in Norway, it is clear that something has gone terribly wrong.

Fear haunts the faces of the crew. No one will talk. And someone wants Daly to stop asking questions. But the more he uncovers, the more dangerous the stakes become. Until at last he comes face-to-face with a shocking secret, a secret that pitches him into a harrowing race to prevent nothing less than . . . apocalypse.

About this title

Review

The ideal destructive plague is one which is passed on before it kills, one which is in the air we breathe and the fevered skin we touch. John Case drops heavy hints to the well-informed as to what is at stake in his new techno- thriller early on, when the sole survivor of a North Korean village sterilised by its own government's bombers babbles uncomprehendingly about a "Spanish Lady". He confirms them by sending a party of American scientists to excavate a group of miners caught in permafrost since 1918; bodies which prove, scarily, to be long gone with only a painted white horse in their place. A woman bacteriologist and an overbearing science journalist put together bits of the story that their government is scared of anyone knowing. Members of a pseudo-scientific cult carry out terrible murders--frying the over-curious in a giant microwave--for what they regard as the long-term good of the planet.

There are comparatively few surprises here, but ingenious plotting and a pervading sense of horrid possibility; Case knows his biotechnology and has a healthy paranoia about all of the possible groups that might abuse its power. --Roz Kaveney

Review

"Gripping . . . [A] tense thriller."
--Publishers Weekly

"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED . . . [A] PAGE-TURNING SCIENTIFIC THRILLER . . . UNNERVING AND COMPELLING."
--Library Journal

"EERIE SUSPENSE . . . Thrusts readers into the thick of a rapid-fire plot . . . Keep[s] you turning the pages and praying that this is only fiction."
--www.amazon.com

"[A] SUPERCHILLING TALE . . . MIND-BLOWING . . . DESTROY[S] THE READER'S SLEEP."
--Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0345435796
• ISBN 13: 9780345435798
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 373