Customer Reviews

Cold Plague

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The two doctors with the World Health Organization who appeared in the novel, Pandemic, Dr. Noah Haldane and Dr. Duncan McLeod, join forces with the European Union's department of agriculture representative Elise Renard to analyze several recent cases of what appears to be a variant of Creutzfelt-Jakob Disease. When the team arrives in Limoges, France, to begin their investigation into seven mad cows, they quickly discover that this rapidly accelerated vCJD is not a straight-forward situation of contaminated cows leading to human infection. They delve more deeply into the case and find what they believe is a link between the dead human victims -- is the link connected to the cows or to water all consumed before their deaths? Water that was given to them by a mutual acquaintance -- water with supposed healing properties that came from the huge recently tapped underground lake in Antarctica - Lake Vostok. The purest water on earth, untouched by pollution. The market for this drinking water will be huge and those that discovered and tapped it definitely anticipate the huge profits they will get when it is bottled and brought and sold to the type of people who will pay a hundred dollars or more for a single bottle. They need to solve the mystery fast.

Unfortunately, as the reader suspects immediately, the water contains prions that act very rapidly to destroy the brains of those who consume it. In a race against time, the WHO team and Elise Renard try to find and stop the greedy owners who don't seem to care that they are selling a very horrible death along with the water. The reader knows the major characters involved in this complex coverup, but is not fully able to separate the good guys from the bad guys until almost the very end of the novel. It moves along at a nice pace, back and forth between the settings of French provincial farms and small cities, to the cold ice of the Antarctic.

My favorite genre is the medical thriller and I read them mainly for the science and this idea of the CJD was original and well done. I knew that the doctors would save the world from drinking the contaminated water and having a massive CJD outbreak, but the story of how they solved the case was interesting and I really enjoyed it. I saw that Kalla has written another novel, Of Flesh and Blood, and I may have to read it at some point, but I'm really waiting for another with the Haldane and McLeod characters as I want to see what happens to them next!

Written in 2008, Cold Plague's plot involves a prion filled ancient lake whose water is sold for profit. Unique and fascinating, the story lines were endless. Yet, Dr Kalla, a Canadian author/physician living in Canada choose to nauseatingly beat his relentless theme of the villain being yet another big bad capitalistic company this time either French/American or Russian (it was hard to tell). Doesn't Canada have any big bad Canadian companies? In addition, the writing itself fell short. It was not very suspenseful and most of the writing was bland. The ending was predicable long before the end with the story stuck in one gear with no real highs or lows.

After spending millions to drill for Antarctic oil (oil needed to heat homes/run cars, employ people and to not line the pockets of Middle East/South American enemies) the company is denied drilling rights. Denied their mean nasty oil profits, the corporate sponsors of this expedition turn lemon into lemonade and sell water instead. However, after finding out the water is poisonous, the big bad (Not Canadian) company decides to put profits before people and pedal knowingly dangerous water from Lake Vostok discovered while drilling to narcissistic vain health-seeking rich consumers in Bel Aire (that mean nasty U.S) and around the world claiming the water is everything from a beauty aid to a life extender. Don't they have stuck up narcissistic rich people in Canada either?

Dr Kalla is a physician employed by the Canadian universal health care industry turned author so naturally a magnanimous benevolent government plays the hero to the rescue in the form of government employed World Health Organization physicians and a French alphabet soup of bureaucracies to save the world from big bad capitalistic companies who pay the taxes that pay their salaries. His themes are as entrenched as the government bureaucracies he so loves.

Cold Plague is an enjoyable Robin Cook, Michael Crichton-style thriller.

A bug from the Antarctic is threatening mankind, and it's up to our hero from the World Health Organization to figure out what the bug is--and stop it. The plot is suspenseful, and the environment of the French countryside is properly gloomy. The heroes and heroines of this story are all nicely drawn and sympathetic. The villains are a bit too one-dimensional for me. Despite the author's best intentions, the emotional core of this story is not the good WHO Doctor, but the French cop lady. Avril brought in the true humanity.

The science was great (I love it when real scientists write this sort of stuff). My major criticism (and why this novel didn't get five stars), is the stakes for humankind are just not high enough. Sure they COULD be. But only the potential threat is described in the novel. This story is just not disastrous enough! Sure, a few people are sickened, and there's lots of peripheral cover-up violence. But unless the stakes are highly personal (like the hero is under attack by the bug), or mankind is really being undone in relentless waves, I'm not completely satisfied.

Waste of time! I love this type of fiction when it's well written. I like science fiction that's "heavy on the science" so Cold Plague seemed like a "natural". Unfortunately the writing is uninspired, to say the least.

I was very tempted to put the book down on any number of occasions but "in for a penny..."I should have followed my instincts on this one!

Worth a read, but not one of favorites in terms of the reader's process. I found it difficult to connect to the experience of the characters or to be swept along by it. I could see it as a movie so it does have entertainment value and a worthwhile plot. Some people may like it -- especially, say, if you like James Rollins (I get the same feeling after his books, kind of like having just gone on a roller coaster ride: entertaining, does not require much interaction/cognitive processing although the plot/story tends to be sufficiently interesting in its own right, but the memories are kind of short-lived).

An amazing book.

On the surface, a thriller about mysterious deaths from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in France,
made more mysterious by emerging connection to water mined from an ancient lake buried deep under the Ice of Antarctica.

The story becomes a race against time, as this ancient water begins to enter the market as an exotic product, the purest (hah!) water on Earth, selling to the richest of the rich at outrageous prices.

As a mystery, everything is resolved in the nick of time, so you needn't worry there. And the actual "mystery" is never really unresolved, since the novel follows both the heros and villains from the beginning.

But, as I read this, it was hard to put down, and even more surprising, I found it actually entered my nightime dreams and affected them. It really hit a nerve. Not really nightmares, but the prions of the story seemed to have found a way deep into my thoughts, as I tried to finish the story in my sleep. This hasn't happened from a book for me in a long time, and I think it represents just how well written and captivating the story was.

I found this author after buying a paperback at a garage sale. Since then I have read all of his (Kalla's) books and waited anxiously for this one.....NOT DISAPPOINTED IN THE LEAST! Great read!

Aftering seeing this book I decided to try Daniel's older "Blood Lies". I enjoyed it and decided to buy Cold Plague. I can't put my finger on why, but I enjoyed Blood Lies more. Despite that, I do think this is a good book.

Dr. Claude Fontaine and his team develop a method to bring to the surface fresh water from a gigantic lake two miles under the Antarctic ice. Claude sees the economic possibilities as his pristine pool will contain no modern day toxins. He plan is to sell bottles containing this natural water at exorbitant prices.

The World Health Organization sends its investigative infectious disease specialist Dr. Noah Haldane (see PANDEMIC) accompanied by Duncan McLeod to France where horrific human deaths from the human equivalent to mad cow disease have been reported. The European Union's Agricultural Commission sends agent Elise Renard to join them the WHO representatives. However, as the evidence mounts, Noah believes these deaths are something similar but not quite the same as mad cow; the speed is much more rapid and the effect much more intense. He soon links the deaths to the Antarctic water that is being pushed by the bottom liners as a health elixir for the wealthy.

This exciting medical thriller pits economic interests against health interests and unlike the American federal government science matters so that Noah and company have a reasonable chance to stop mass production if they can stay alive long enough to make their point heard; the opponents own the media. The story line is fast-paced, but takes a bit too long to get to the bottom line confrontation between money and health. Readers will enjoy this fine tale, but wonder if this occurred in the USA instead of France what the outcome would have been.

Harriet Klausner

Considering this book missed the last big mad cow scare by about a decade, I thought it was starting out with an interesting premise that could have gone so many interesting ways. Instead we were treated to a predictable thriller that literally moved at a glacier's pace. A plague of interchangeable characters helped little.

This book brings me to the end of Dr. Kalla's medical thrillers. A while back, I bought his entire back list at a used book store when I was looking for a medical thriller fix. This one got lost in the shuffle. I hope his new line of medical epic-sagas is better than Cold Plague turned out.