REVIEW: Patient Zero

PLOT: When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there's either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills... and there's nothing wrong with Joe Ledger's skills. And that's both a good, and a bad thing. It's good because he's a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can't handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS for short. It's bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance...

REVIEW: Let me just start by saying that I only picked up Patient Zero because of, well, zombies. On my quest to read everything and anything zombie I was constantly told to pick this book up. For months I'd had the sequel The Dragon Factory sitting on my shelf but not until I finally went to read it did I realize that it had a predecessor. My, oh my, am I glad that I read its predecessor first because now I cannot freaking wait to jump into the second Joe Ledger novel The Dragon Factory.

Joe Ledger is a badass beyond measure. If you put literary character Jack Reacher together with the likes of TV hero Jack Bauer, you still only have about half of what Ledger is. Joe is an absolute machine, and if there is one thing Maberry did without flaw it was create this unbelievably badass character. When Joe is fighting the baddies, you can tell that Maberry is at his strongest. Often times when action is written, it's really hard to follow fluidly so that it comes out looking as awesome in the reader's imagination as it did the writer's. Jonathan Maberry is the master of writing awesome Joe Ledger fight scenes, because he writes them so well you just read it non-stop and it flows together so well it's as if you're watching some kung fu master before your very eyes on the page. The first time that Joe's fighting style is analyzed by Mr. Church, who I'll get to in a second, it's very obvious that Maberry knew what he was doing with Joe from the start. I can't recall a literary character as downright heroic and unstoppable as Joe Ledger, he simply makes this book all on his own.

The thing about Patient Zero though is that there isn't just one character that is written very well. Every single character is written with perfection, and I could not get over how many quirks each individual character had, and how much personality everyone had. Typically I'm not a fan of multi-character storylines, and there aren't here either, though Joe has a terrific supporting cast. Joe's buddy Rudy is a perfect balance for it to be believable that they are best friends, despite incredibly different careers and thought processes. Mr. Church who hires Joe for the DMS is just incredibly chilling on every page, even though he's technically on the good side. His fascination with cheap cookies is such a simple trait to add, but it works so well with his character. Also, Joe's team that he ends up leading around from place to place to stop the terrorist threats all have a bit of character to them.

Even the baddies all have unbelievably fleshed out traits, and El Mujahid who is the main villain is so cold, and so evil it's just so easy to believe. Though he's not in the book for maybe more than 20% of the time, his storyline is flowing along with Joe's all the same. It's just such a well-written book the way all of the villains including El Mujahid, his wife Amirah, Sebastian Gault, his buddy Toys, and others are all perfectly placed within the story and only deal with certain characters in the book. To not reveal much to ruin the story, but not all of the bad guys ever get the chance to meet Joe and I think that's what makes this battle of good vs. evil so special.

Back to why I picked this book up, zombies. Yes, there are zombies in your typical sense but they come about from an unusual threat not seen in zombie fiction, at least to me so far in my new interest of the subject. The terrorists have found a way to manufacture a virus that they plan to attack America with and just set us back to 0. The possibility of this actually happening, while it is science fiction, is actually somewhat high. I would not put it past our technology and intelligence today to come up with something so hanus and actually have the capability and determination to use it for a cause. Just imagine a season of TV's 24, but instead of a day it's a week long, and instead of terrorists using bombs they're using bio-weapons, and instead of Jack Bauer, there is... Joe Ledger.

Do yourself a favor, fan of zombies or not folks. Go pick up this book and give it a read, I promise you won't be disappointed. This is definitely in my new top 3 for all-time favorite fiction, and I have a feeling it's going to remain there for quite awhile. It's a superbly written thriller, a cleverly written tale of horror, and a suspenseful story. Well worth the time and money spent, and now my sights are set on the latest entry in the Joe Ledger series Extinction Machine, which came out March 2013! Bravo, Jonathan Maberry, bravo!

RATED : ( R )

WRITING : ( 9 / 10 )

STORY : ( 10 / 10 )

COVER : ( 8 / 10 )

AWESOME : ( 10 / 10 )

FINAL RATING : ( 10 / 10 )