Patient Zero

This was a total waste of time and money. If it’s possible, I would like a refund. I really wanted to like it but I couldn’t even force myself to keep reading past the first 100 pages or so. If that far. Everything about the main character annoyed me and it tainted the rest of the story. The way his “martial arts prowess” is portrayed and the unconvincing attempt to make him a smartass were the main problems. The dialogue was eye rolling most of the time. The obvious intention was for Ledger to come off as a smart*** but it fell short. Half of what he said sounded like an attempt to prove just how clever and snarky he was . This got along really quick. The tone felt like more monthy teenager you wanted to smack upside the head than smart***. It got especially bad when he interacted with his “team” in training and on their first mission. It sounded like corny, cliched B movie fodder.
Admittedly, I’ve never served in the military but I find it impossible to believe that special forces vets would defer leadership to a surly, snarky detective with no combat experience but is super good at martial arts.
Also, I’ve done martial arts and I had a hard time following the descriptions of fight scenes.
This book is a total waste of time and money. It’s not even the best zombie book titled Patient Zero. Read the one LT Ryan instead. JT Sawyer’s Emergence is way better too. They’re both free. I really hope Amazon will give me my money back.

I’ve read all of Tom Clancy’s books and had recently finished another author’s first book in the thriller genre (The Lions of Lucerne) and had come away disappointed by the cliches and shallow plot, so I approached this book with muted expectations. However, there are many, many things to like about this book.

There are the characters. Joe Ledger is the main character and rather than being a super soldier, he comes along as a different flavor. Yes, he’s “Warrior” but he’s also a “Cop” so he doesn’t have the freedom to act that some Special Ops characters tend to have. He’s a “hero waiting to happen”.

There is the team that he needs to lead: First Sergeant Bradley Sims, Second Lieutenant Oliver Brown, CPO Samuel Tyler, and Bunny Rabbit. Joe starts by offending all of them and then needs to shape them into a team who trust each other and work together.

His friend and “shrink” is Rudy Sanchez who gets swept up into the story and has his own role to play.

There’s even a love interest in Major Grace Courtland however the author develops this slowly and let’s Joe demonstrate his character and that he’s a gentleman.

There are the “bad guys”. Rather than picking a terrorist stereotype, the author comes up with a new concept: a corporate super-villain who uses terrorists who, in turn, use him. In addition, there are the moles planted by the villain in our government organizations.

The Bio-technology is plausible and well explained in the book.

“If you seek peace, prepare for war.” (“Si vis pacem, para bellum”)

The plot and the pace grew throughout the book and ended on a high note.

I’m looking forward to reading this author’s next book.

I only found 1 typo in the Kindle edition of the book which I’ve reported to Amazon.

Joe Ledger is a Baltimore cop who has been recruited by the Department of Military Science (DMS) which is a government agency that dwells in the shadows and is only answerable to the President of the United States. Their purpose is to combat threats that are beyond the scope of even the most elite US military units and law enforcement agencies.

What’s the threat that Ledger has been enlisted to fight against? One of the most wanted Islamic terrorists in the world, El Mujahid, has gotten his hands on a bioweapon that could make the entire human race go extinct. The bioweapon causes people to turn into zombies! In an unholy alliance, the terrorist group is being financed by Sebastian Gault, the owner of the most powerful and influential pharmaceutical company on the planet. El Mujahid is in it to strike an apocalyptic blow against America. Gault is in it to make trillions of dollars selling the cure for the zombie virus. Let’s just say Mujahid and Gault don’t exactly see eye to eye on the final endgame.

Some zombies have been infiltrated into the US in cold storage so its up to Joe and a hastily assembled strike team to get intel about the terrorists plans.

I know, aren’t we about zombied out by now? Like the overinundation with vampires after Twilight or cheap mom sex after 50 Shades of Grey. The answer? Not quite. You’re looking at the man who finally got around to reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy after decades of beating around the bush. I was completely horrified by the utter banality of it all and quit reading about 60% through the novel. I felt like I had wasted two months of my life. So I was ready for a light and entertaining easy read that wouldn’t strain my brain cells.

At first I thought I wouldn’t make it through this book because our hero Joe Ledger seemed like such a basic dudebro horndog. But he began to grow on me and matured a bit. One of the suprising things about this novel is that killing zombies and killing people actually takes a toll on the good guys. This isn’t the point click and shoot morality of a videogame. People are scarred when they take lives. They have to deal with mental issues because they are facing the impossibility of people rising from the dead to eat them. I really liked Maberry’s realistic take on it. I feel like even in shows like The Walking Dead, the cast quickly got over the new reality of zombies walking around.

The action in the book was done really well, even though Joe’s team members were almost anonymous and hard to visualize. They just became names to me and never really developed their own personalities. The MAIN players were all written well though: the leader of the DMS, Gault, Mujahid, and another DMS squad leader, Grace. All these characters had their levels of mystery and really intrigued me.

The novel does get a bit wacky and reads like a cross between James Bond and World War Z. Sebastian Gault is the super villain with his limitless sums of money and secret lairs with all the science fiction tech. DMS has a super computer that can comb the world for any scrap of information the department needs. But it never gets really corny. I felt like Maberry just tipped his hat to those worlds.

I will definitely give the next book in the series a try.

Have you ever wondered what you would get if you took all the Micheal Chricton novels, the X-Files, The Marvel comics and the works of Dan Brown, put them in a blender, and seasoned the resulting pulp fiction with a whole bunch of cocaine? Well, you would most likely get a large pile of shredded paper, and possibly arrested for the cocaine if you weren’t careful. If you were lucky though, you might just get the Joe Ledger series.
Im not going to pretend that these are novels with much literary merit to them. They will not challenge you, you will not find life changing story arcs, or even many characters with any real dynamism. What you will find is pure story telling at it’s finest and most outlandish, action that rips past you at the speed of light, sucks you in, and refuses to let go.
I really reccomend these, I dived into patient zero while looking for a good zombie book and I am glad I found this series. Daft, silly, and great fun.

The idea that underpins the story is very good. A very advanced biotech company develops a virus that kills the victim but keeps them walking until they have bitten somebody to infect them with the deadly virus. It is terrifying. But money will be made out of providing the antidote.

The genius behind the biotech company teams up with Islamic terrorists to hatch a plot which is going to kill the United States of America.

In the meantime, Baltimore Detective Joe Ledger is recruited into the top secret unit, Department of Military Science, DMS, which is dealing with the threat. He is a super-hard policeman, although I had to laugh at part of his assessment. The head of the DMS is the mysterious Mr Church, who is answerable only to the president.

Elapsed time from the slide locking back to completed kill is 0.031 seconds, said Church. Tell me why I want him for the DMS.

Can you believe that anyone can react to an event and complete a move to kill somebody in three-hundredths of a second? The move itself would have taken over half a second.

There were a few more minor irritations.

Sure, what do you want? My usual. Iced half-caf ristretto quad grande two pump raspberry two percent no whip light ice with caramel drizzle three-and-a-half-pump white mocha. Is any of that actually coffee? More or less. And you think Im damaged.

Is that necessary?

Counting Javad, our patient zero, we have a loss of life totaling one hundred and eighty-eight civilians and twenty-four DMS operatives. Two hundred and ten deaths as a result of one carrier.

I make that 212.

LOL, Bunny murmured.

Clearly didnt laugh out loud if he was murmuring!

I hate to break up this Dr. Phil moment but I kind have to go fight some zombies.

Where does like come into it?

Those irritations aside, the tension in the story builds with a race against time to save humanity.

The middle section of the book became a bit predictable and boring for me, as it resembled a shoot-em-up computer game, but the last third was all action and compulsive reading, with lots of twists and turns.

It is exciting, and the ending is good.

I really dont know what normal zombie stories are like, but I believe that this one would be different. I enjoyed the ride.

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