The First Horseman - Softcover

Case, John

3.6

1,617 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712677038 ISBN 13: 9780712677035

Publisher: Century, 1998

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The Spanish Flu killed 30 million people worldwide in 1918. Now, with history threatening to repeat itself, a scientific expedition speeds towards a remote island in the Arctic Sea, to recover strains of the lethal virus preserved under layers of ice.

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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

"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

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