Customer Reviews

Health Agent

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What happens when you lose everything, even your own life? Health Agent Montgomery Black could tell you. Black works for HAP (Health Agency of Paxton) along with partner Opal Cowrie, agent Vern Woodmere (a Red War veteran), and Beak, an alien species called Enisku. The entire agency is busy tracking down all people infected with the brand new, deadly STD called Mutstav 670. M670 has a 100% fatality rate and is highly contagious, and until a cure is found all who are infected must be rounded up by HAP.

On a routine investigation of an artistic show being performed in an abandoned warehouse - once the site of a massive toxic spill - the four attend the latest showing of artist Toll Loveland's performance piece called Pandora's Box. During Loveland's show, he releases a flock of carnivorous moths ... all infected with M670. He also shows a video of the murder of Auretta Here, famous for her VT news spotlights about M670 victims (of which she is one) from her hidden location.

Agent Black is bitten, and immediately contracts the virus. Later that evening, he will unknowingly pass it on to Opal during sex. Loveland disappears, literally, from the show. Neither HAP nor the Forcers are able to discover how he escaped or his current whereabouts. Once its discovered that the moths contained the virus, Loveland becomes Paxton's most wanted man - for the slow murder of his audience. Black continues to investigate for awhile, until the virus incapacitates him and he loses his job. Black is dying.

At the brink of death, the cure is found, but Montgomery Black is not the same person, and he never will be again. He begins a new, reclusive life. Loveland's body is found, wasted away by M670, but Black believes Loveland is still alive. Only after meeting a beautiful, scarred actress named Mauve Pond does Black begin to feel life again, but can he pull himself back enough from the brink to follow his previous course of pursuing Loveland by finding all of Loveland's accomplices and traces?

'Health Agent' is truly a fantastic read. There's horror, suspenseful detective work, scifi, otherworldly surroundings, superb character development, and of course, Punktown (one of my absolute favorite places to visit). The story is fast-paced, riddled with many interesting characters(each clearly individual and fully fleshed out), and developing plot twists and changes that keep you reading long into the night. Jeffrey Thomas is one of my favorite authors. His style is flawless, his imagination is incredible, and his ability to paint his imagination into the form of the written word is utterly genius. His creation of Punktown (a fictional city on another planet, used in many other novels such as Everybody Scream!, Monstrocity, Deadstock, and Blue War) is brilliant; you can feel the mean streets beneath your feet, smell its crafty atmosphere, and fully visualize its teeming population - all without effort through Thomas's smoothly flowing prose and dialogues.

'Health Agent' is a welcome addition to Punktown, close to being my favorite so far. It combines the medical ickiness of a mysterious infection with the excitement of a well written detective novel. Don't miss out on this 10 star book! Enjoy!

I agree with the enthusiasm of the previous reviewer.

What I find interesting is that Health Agent was written in the 1980s and is only seeing press now, with some minor tweaking by the author. It is suffused with the tension that went along with the worst part of the early HIV epidemic in the US, before the virus was identified and when the gay community was being subjected to terrible, fear-fueled discrimination. Young readers who did not live through this period will have a hard time grasping what it was like, but echoes of this paranoia find their way into Health Agent, adding to its gritty realism.

One other thing is I was much more enthusiastic about this novel than the last three (Monstrocity, Deadstock and Blue War). Maybe it was the absence of Cthulhu mythos diversions or the lack of the Vietnam War type flourishes. Maybe it was just Mr. Thomas' ealier style. Whatever it was, I found the prose fresher, particularly in the last half of the book when the tension kicked up a couple of notches.

Health Agent stands well on its own but readers new to Punktown are advised to seek out the short story collections Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Grey and Voices from Punktown. I always thought Punktown worked better in the short story format anyway.

Finally, I read the limited edition hardcover which had some typesetting errors, mainly missing quotation marks. I don't know if these were present in the mmpb but they were not too distracting.

I've set out to become something of a scholar of Jeffrey Thomas' Punktown work, and I've been reading everything he's written in the setting to date. Although Health Agent features no Cthulhu Mythos that have come to define Punktown, there are plenty of evils within; the horror of Lovecraftian beasts is nothing in comparison to the horror man inflicts on himself. Part detective story, part love story, and all sci-fi noir that Thomas does best, Health Agent involves Agent Montgomery Black, who works for the Health Agency of Paxton (that's Punktown to you and I). With his lover/partner Opal, Red War veteran Vern, and the bird-like alien agent known as Beak, they face a horrible new threat: Mustav 670, a fatal contagion spread through body fluids. Black and Cowrie's mettle is tested when they are forced to put down a male prostitute infected with the disease on live television. They soon learn that it's easy to be judge, jury, and executioner...until someone you care for is infected.

It's no spoiler that the disease will eventually take hold in some of our protagonists, even kill them. The crux of the story is what the survivors do with their lives afterward. Although it's set in a science fiction universe, the characters are all lost souls trying to make sense of a random universe. Cowrie and Black live together, work together, even sleep together, but they have not expressed feelings for each other. Vern still holds the wounds of the Red War seething inside him. Beak - a member of the Enisku race that mates for life -- is consumed with vengeance against his wife's murderers. They all have one thing in common: the only way to peace is through brutal, bloody violence.

In Health Agent, violence and art commingle in fascinating ways. Arch-nemesis Toll Loveland is an artist who uses Mustav 670 as his brush and Punktown as his canvass. Interspersed throughout the pursuit of Loveland is commentary on art, critics, violence in modern culture, violence as art, and art as violence. Health Ageny is a glorious mix of the macabre, grotesque, and disturbing all rolled into a frightening parable about HIV. One of Thomas' best.

Jeffrey Thomas has a knack for clever and well presented versions of reality that are just close enough to the real thing to make you worry, yet be entertained by the cleverness of it all. His words are able to conjure up scenes that you never would have thought of but once in your mind stick like tasty candy.
I recommend his work to anyone who likes twilight zone/ alfred hitchcock sci-fi horror suspense with a clever tongue in cheek quality.
Imagine a blizzard of black snow...

As always Thomas' Punktown novel keeps you turning pages into the night. Hope to see more.

Another outstanding "Punktown" novel by Mr. Thomas. A weird mix of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Private Eye, Mythos and other genres of which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Don't miss this stuff!

I'm a fan, but this particular novel was just okay. There really wasn't anything very interesting or original in it.