Library Limelights 297

 

Daniel Kalla. We All Fall Down. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2019.

A seemingly invincible disease crops up in the city of Genoa, causing massive panic in neighbour-hoods and consternation among medical pros. Another tale of life with Covid? No, check the date. The novel was published before Covid-19 became known to the world. And yet the novel predicts the now-familiar details of the scramble to analyze the bacteria, find the source, initiate contact tracing, institute protective measures, and create a vaccine. How could it be so well foreseen? ... Author Daniel Kalla is an emergency medical doctor in Vancouver. All Fall Down is not his first medical thriller (when could the man possibly find time to write?!).

In Genoa, Dr. Nico Oliva represents the World Health organization (WHO); he calls on a former colleague (and former lover), Dr. Alana Vaughn, for consultation. Alana now works for NATO, having left WHO after a disheartening experience with them. An aggressive disease has killed a worker at a construction site owned by Marcello Zanetti, the uncle of Nico's wife. The speed at which it progresses, is shocking. Within days, city hospitals are over capacity. Alana doesn't hesitate to join the WHO team led by Dr Byron Menke. To their further astonishment, they identify two distinct types of plague among the victims: bubonic and pneumonic, both caused by Yersinia bacteria. At first, antibiotics help with the former ‒ not everyone dies – but the latter fatally attacks the lungs. Though the investigating team suspects rats and fleas in Genoa, why is the disease occurring in other, separate locations?

Interspersed with the race to control the plague are the diary notes of a barber-surgeon who witnesses, and later suffers from, the Great Plague of 1348. Among other victims, Rafael Pasqua treated the monks of the ancient abbey, which ruins lie beneath Zanetti's present building site. Pasqua observed changes in their rat population that initially succumbed as humans did, but they soon demonstrate immunity; the monks take to almost worshipping the vermin as a sign of God's work. Pasqua is not only constantly exposed to the disease, evading the symptoms for a long time, but he's in danger from the self-serving Archbishop. In the lowest human form of laying blame, today's anti-Islam sentiment mirrors anti-Semitism of the 14th century.

It's high pressure from beginning to end as the doctors rush to find answers; Kalla is expert at keeping you glued to the pages. Suspend your disbelief over a few details and enjoy a topnotch thriller with a fascinating balance of history and even a touch of romance.

Word: petrichor = the smell of rain, specifically a first rain after a long, dry spell

The Present

▪ "Patients dying despite antibiotics. All of them from overwhelming pneumonic plague." (65)

▪ "After all, the Soviets weaponized the plague in the seventies and eighties. So did the U.S. government. Maybe one of those strains of Yersinia got loose somehow?" (65)

▪ "Byron, it's more important than ever to consider the possibility of a genetically engineered strain—" But the line goes dead before she can finish the thought. (89)

▪ "Ah, yes, hospitals. The world's breeding grounds for antibiotic resistance. Grouping all those sick patients together. It's not so different from filling a children's pool with piranhas." (124)

▪ "Scientists in England have reconstructed its [Black Death] ancient genome from bone marrow found in a burial site in Hereford. They've cracked its full genetic code, Byron." (175)

▪ "I'm saying I don't know of another black rat anywhere that matches this particular sub-breed." (229)

▪ "Rafel Pasqua ... now he really was something. A hero." (366)

The Past

▪ I told Jacob that we do make a difference by draining patients' boils, bleeding them when the humors are unbalanced, and applying other time-honored remedies. (18)

▪ You no longer see rat carcasses? Only healthy rats? (60)

▪ There were men and women lying in the streets, some already dead while others lay suffocating on blood and unholy excretions. (67)

▪ But, Doctor, they have been chosen by God. To sacrifice these anointed animals as though they were some pagan offering is not right. (108)

▪ Surely you must know it is against the law for a Jewish doctor to treat a Christian? the Archbishop said. (181)

▪ The rat stills with fear as it dangles in front of his face. (195)

▪ "You heretics, you murderers of our Savior! You have brought this cursed plague upon us believers. You will all be punished for it yet!" (258)

Ebola, Liberia

"And before the WHO, I was stationed for four months in Afghanistan. Christ, I almost died there. But Liberia ..." She closes her eyes. "That was worse. Way worse."

"Worse how?"

"The WHO sent us in unarmed and unprepared. We were as useless as a rescue boat without life preservers ... or rope ... or a fucking rudder or compass, for that matter." She looks up at him. "There were only three of us on my team. It was so bad, so much worse than what we expected. I warned Geneva every single day. And they just sat on my reports. All we wanted to do was to protect local doctors and nurses who were caring for the sick and dying. They were begging us for simple stuff like sterile gloves and masks, body bags for the dead. The most basic infection-control gear. And all I got from Geneva was the runaround."

"That surprises you? You know how the bureaucracy creaks along at the WHO. Takes a special task force just to get the printer paper refilled." (199)

Troubled man

He grabs his head in his hands. He cannot help but remember Dr. Lonzo's words: "The voices you hear, they sound as real to you as mine does. But they are not real. They are nothing more than auditory hallucinations. A symptom of your schizoaffective disorder. No different from a runny nose caused by a cold."

Dr. Lonzo is such a kind man, and so easy to talk to. Were he not a doctor, he would have made a wonderful priest. What if Dr. Lonzo has been right all along? Maybe the voices are all attributable to "persecutory delusions" as the doctor called them.

He rocks on the bed, squeezing his temples as hard as he can. (246)

Linwood Barclay. Look Both Ways. Ebook download from TPL. New York: William Morrow, 2022.

I was going to begin with "Linwood Barclay never disappoints." Such is my admiration for the prolific author. And then the inconceivable happened. He wrote a burlesque—about coloured jelly beans, as one of his characters refers to them.

Right off, it's as if we are thrown into the middle ‒ not the beginning ‒ of an industrial rivalry. Who is the bad guy, we ask, as two unattractive CEOs of competing companies are either plotting evil or demeaning their employees. And what is the product they sell? Cars. Not your average Hyundai or Chev, these are advanced technology driverless cars. Lisa Carver's company called Arrivals, Inc. makes the eponymous Arrival. Brandon Kyle's company makes the Gandalf, although he's almost bankrupt now because one of his cars went rogue, killing two people; the resulting publicity was a killer. He's accusing Carver of planting a virus in the car's programming. Meanwhile Carver is about to hold a glorified press conference on Garrett Island to celebrate the successful demonstration of her self-driving autos: a month of the islanders using nothing but Arrivals while regular cars were banned. Each car politely and obediently responds to its owner, like your Siri or your Alexa.

The good guy is Sandra Montrose who was hired to arrange the Arrival press conference. Her family and their friends are good, feisty Barclay characters. Love their neighbour Bruce who's been hiding a stolen 1959 Cadillac de Ville! Meanwhile the presser degenerates into shock when an Arrival attacks Ms Carver, who bleeds to death. As if on cue, the hundreds of small, curvy, cheerful-looking, brightly coloured jelly beans vehicles begin chasing, injuring, killing people. No one knows how to stop them, not even Albert Ruskin, Carver's P.A. They destroy emergency vehicles, to the distress of Joe, the local police chief; they climb stairs, they talk back (in reasonable tones). People go berserk to account for missing family members. Readers who love cars and AI will love the chaos.

At about that point, I started speed-reading just to get through it. I wasn't expecting a Stephen King on steroids. Naturally, Barclay has a typically twisted plot but we are supposed to forgive him for this sci-fi-like departure just because he always loved cars? To my mind, Barclay went a bit off the rails, er, road.

Bits

▪ For one month, the company proposed, turn your car over to us and we'll give you one of ours in return. Be part of a grand demonstration, where in one isolated location, no one—no one at all―has to actually drive a car, but can get anywhere they want to go. (29-30)

▪ "I have never had a day when it was more important that things do not go wrong." (47)

▪ Arrival had not only used one of his own employees to sabotage him, but murdered her when her conscience got the better of her. (68)

▪ Lisa was dabbing the corners of her mouth with a tissue and looked at Sandra as if she were a cockroach sitting on a cupcake. (82)

▪ He was about to take something that was already on his laptop and add it to the Arrival system. A donation. A gift. (101)

▪ If Lisa Carver had to die, she could not have gone out more splendidly. (162)

▪ Jesus Christ, she was having a fucking conversation with a fucking car. (184)

▪ "Christ on a trampoline," Bruce said. "Get back on the road! Crank it hard!" (213)

▪ Before long, the open area of the upper mall was clear of people—at least those who were still alive. Corpses were scattered everywhere. (238)

▪ "The virus is irreversible."