PATIENT ZERO {JOE LEDGER #1}.

PATIENT ZERO {JOE LEDGER #1} by JONATHAN MABERRY.

SOURCE: Ex-library stock.

THE BOOK {According to the back cover}: Police officer Joe Ledger, martial expert, ex-army, self-confessed brutal warrior, is scared. The man he just killed is the same man he killed a week ago. The top secret government agency The Department of Military Sciences are also scared, they have word of a terrorist plot straight from a nightmare - a bid to spread a plague that kills its victims and turns them into zombies. Time is running out and Joe has shown he has the abilities they need to lead one of their field teams.

And so the race is one to find out who is responsible, destroy the terrorist cell and stop the coming apocalypse. But somehow the terrorists are always one step ahead and hell beckons.

FIRST SENTENCE {Part One:Walkers: Chapter One}: When you have killed the same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 14}: He finished his cookie and took another vanilla wafer. I'm not sure I could trust a man who would bypass an Oreo in favour of vanilla wafers. It's a fundamental character flaw, possibly a sign of true evil.

MY THOUGHTS: Largely a hit but not completely. Whilst I essentially found it a great story I don't think the author did himself any favours by jumping between characters every chapter, by splitting the action between Afghanistan and pharmaceutical expert/philanthropist Sebastian Gault and Baltimore detective come special task force agent, Joe Ledger, in the way that he did.

As a post 9/11 apocalyptic/terrorist thriller about terrorists attacking America I may well not have given this a second glance but as a non-traditional zombie read I really quite enjoyed it. 

Yes, that's right, without giving too much away, Patient Zero does away with your typical supernatural zombies in favour of 'walkers' (zomble type beings) created by man as a bioweapon. All very scary given that the author makes references to the well documented Prion Diseases.

OK, so the body count was high - thankfully for me whilst the action could be brutal much of the violence had an almost computer game kind of feel to it - and then there's the love interest that, well, at best didn't do anything for the story and at worst felt positively awkward but with an opening chapter that began 

'When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. 
And there's nothing wrong with my skills' 

you know chances are you are in for an interesting if perhaps tongue-in-cheek read.

What really made this novel for me though were the characters (after all who could resist names like Bunny Rabbit or 'Amazing' Grace?) and in particular, somewhat surprisingly, lead character, Joe Ledger, himself. Cocky and overly sure of himself, a bit of a misogynist perhaps but the kind who women love - James Bond and just about every other hero of that type you can think of rolled into one. I should have disliked him and yet there was something about him (his sense of humour?) that I found totally compelling.

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