Book Review: Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry

• Review: Patient Zero
• Series: Joe Ledger #1
• Author: Jonathan Maberry
• No of Pages: 421
• Release Date: March 3rd, 2009
• Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Goodreads Synopsis:

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….

What’s happening:

Joe Ledger is a cop. He’s had some bad days, some really bad days when he was a teenager and he now has anger issues. But he deals with those anger issues by beating the crap out of the bad people. But then someone comes his way, Joe doesn’t know what he is, CIA, FBI, whatever the initials, Joe can tell this guy means some serious business. “Mr. Church” as he calls himself is not a bad guy, technically and Joe can tell straight away that he’s glad that Church is on his side. And Church wants Joe to lead a team for a department he’s never heard before. And all he can think to himself is, I woke up this morning and I was a cop.

After learning that zombies are real, like seriously real. This is not a game, you can not go back to the start after game over, you get bit, you die. Joe wants to freak out but instead channels that anger and frustration to leading his small team.

When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week, then there’s either something wrong with or skills or there’s something wrong with your world. And there’s nothing wrong with my skills. — Joe Ledger

My thoughts:

Ok, wow. Just wow. Phenomenal zombie story! The science behind this is scarily believable. And for that it got me stuck with my nose in a book for only a day and a half. And honestly if I would have had more time I would have straight out read this in one day. The characters are just plain FUN! Believable? Most definitely. All the way down to the terrorist bad guys, even though the only terrifying terrorist I know is Achmed from Jeff Dunham’s video’s. But these religious extremists scared me. But I won’t get too far into that just in case you haven’t read the book!

The point here. Zombies in Patient Zero are awesome. Jonathan Maberry has a way of adding in the real science, conspiracy theories and politics into a weave of a great story. Now, I have to be honest, the science intrigued me a great deal but if you’re not into reading how the zombies were created there are a few pages of information, scattered throughout of course, that you’ll be annoyed with. I definitely didn’t enjoy the political conspiracy theories but even saying that he didn’t make it so much a part of the book that it took away from the main story line.

There was also a huge military presence. I wouldn’t say that gave to or took away from the book, for me, but considering what these guys got and in what little time they got their gear, it was a needed plot point. Although I’m not huge into reading about the military, again, this part was just like the politics, adding in to give the book some depth but not to a point where someone like myself couldn’t read and enjoy it!

So, where does that leave us? With a great cast of characters. Joe Ledger being my absolute favorite. He’s a smartass from the word go and doesn’t let anyone walk all over him. He’s exciting and fun and reminds me a lot of Dirk Pitt from Clive Cussler. Which is pretty awesome and cute as hell!

I’m already thinking if this goes to a movie who would be a good Joe Ledger? Gerard Butler? Carl Urban? All I can say is … YUM! What do you guys think? Perfect Joe Ledger would be?

And speaking of yum! He said / She said starting this Saturday where my hubby and I will both give our ideas and ratings of books that we’ve read. Starting with Patient Zero!

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