Craig's review - 14 March 2009
Wow. That's probably the only word I can use to sum my feelings after reading Scott Sigler's latest novel, ‘Contagious' (Hodder & Stoughton, 2009). To put it simply, this book is now creeping into the corner of my bookshelf system, heading for a place amongst my favourites.
‘Contagious' continues from Sigler's ‘Infected', and although it is wise to have read the first instalment, it is not at all necessary. From the first page, you are thrown in to the situation in the same way the first character is – the President of the United States, serving his first term and finding out a hell of a lot of secrets. Like blue triangular growths appearing on people's skin, turning them into instant psychopaths.
Perry Dawsey, an ex-footballer and all-round tank, was one of those people. Yet he survived (in ‘Infected'), albeit in a spine-tingling way. Now he has a dormant part of the infection inside him, and can hear or feel people as they become infected too. He hunts them down. The government cleans up whilst trying to keep him on a leash. They need surviving specimens to find out how to stop the triangular growths, which eventually rip out of the humans as triangular crawlers, which then try to converge and form a portal that opens a world we aren't meant to know about (literally). And just as the government seems to be winning, the ‘being' that creates the crawlers changes the genetics of the next batch it releases. Rather than just becoming infected by a falling spore from the ‘being', special infected people can now spread the disease (yes, hence the title). They can infect everyone, including the government, and are led by a seven year old girl who thinks the crawlers are dollies and calls Dawsey the bogeyman (this reminded me of Matheson's ‘I Am Legend'). Only a handful of people, including Dawsey, have the knowledge and time to stop them, if they can sort out all of their differences.
The pace of this novel is equivalent to Japan's bullet train (to do away with the old ‘like a freight train' analogy). Seriously, the chapters (all with clever names) make the ones in ‘The DaVinci Code' or a James Patterson novel look long – the story simply snaps from one character to another as more and more people become infected. That of course helps to boost the thriller element of the novel – you just want to read one more chapter, one more chapter, before putting the book down for the night (if you put it down at all). The story crosses many genres though. You have sci-fi elements, with the invasion-like arrangement of the infected (many will compare it to, say, ‘The Body Snatchers', but I couldn't help compare the crawlers to something out of ‘Starship Troopers'. I'm lame, I know). Then you have a great deal of horror, in that those who are infected kill without mercy – a very disturbing (yet wonderful) scene was when an infected woman ripped the skin of her hand off just to slide out of handcuffs and attack her captors; and Perry Dawsey, whilst helping to kill the infected, is also a great big psychotic liability. The body count in this is simply off the charts.
I was delighted to hear that Rogue Pictures have bought the film rights to this novel and its predecessor (‘Infected'), because it's easy to see its potential as a movie. Not because it is some lame action / CGI-filled gore-fest, but because it has believable characters in a tense environment. This novel had just the right amount of detail to allow it to become a cinematic adventure in my mind. The plot never bends too far beyond the absurd – just when one group (the government or the infected) gets a break, something happens to ground them in reality. My favourite is biologist Margaret Montoya's desperate race to find a cure for the infected. Every time she gets close, well… something happens.
For every piece of action there is an incredible depth of research to back it up, or a shift in the story that emulates Michael Crichton's method of weaving scientific knowledge and techniques into tense situations. This is what made it so enjoyable for me. I just had to get to the wonderful, appropriate, f**k you ending (Sigler is very guarded on his twist ending – if that's too much Sigler, let me know).
This will be the first novel I recommend whole-heartedly this year. Pick it up now, and become infected…
the novel
'Contagious' by Scott Sigler (Gollancz) - A mix of Sci-Fi, Thriller, Horror.
