It’s Not Flawless, It’s Isolation Ward
Yesterday I surveyed the Great Pile, and I picked up Flawless, by Joshua Spanogle, probably because it has a striking cover, and because it was on top. I read the back cover, which had several great blurbs, as follows:
“A Smart, Fast-Paced Medical Thriller… Spanogle is a First-Rate Writer.” The Washington Post
“Spanogle delivers a real jolt of excitement” Publishers Weekly
“A plot that moves as rapidly as a lethal virus.” Entertainment Weekly.
I immediately put the book down, because all the blurbs were for his first book, Isolation Ward. So I found a copy of that and I read the first half last night and this morning.
It starts off with a punchy, documentary style description of the progression of the the illnesses of three women admitted to the hospital in Baltimore. It’s fast, it’s authoritative, and it’s just a bit scary. Two quick pages so you know something bad is going to happen, then we find out more about the sick people, and something about our narrator, Dr. Nathaniel McCormick, who works for the Centers for Disease Control and has come to Maryland because of the three scary illnesses.
It’s a really good start. But then I hit two problems.
First, it turns out McCormick is a smart-ass. At least that’s what he keeps telling us, and that’s what all the other characters keep telling him. It’s his bane in life to tell it the way he sees it, and then to get in trouble for it.
But I don’t see it. Case in point: he’s brought to a grave containing a murder victim. The cops are there, forensiccing all over the place. McCormick realizes they’re not protected against the invisible tiny deadly mystery killing thing, so he yells at them and tells them to all get the hell out of the grave and get covered up.
And the cops get mad at him. And he gets in trouble with his boss because of it. Because he may have saved their lives? Hmmm.
Now there are a few scenes where McCormick is actually being a jerk, but they are few and far between compared with the ones where all the characters just decide that he is. And honestly, I have never understood why I need to spend my entertainment minutes with a jerk, anyway.
Second problem. The book has slowed way down. There were the three people who got sick right away, and there was the guy in the grave on page 135, but in between it was just a bunch of interviews and everybody telling our guy he’s not nice. Now the plot has been manipulated so that because he’s a jerk, he’s conveniently being kicked out of the local investigation and being sent off to San Francisco to work on the only important lead they have. And where, incidentally, his two ex-girlfriends live, too.
So I have my doubts here, just short of the half-way mark. But… the writing is good. The sentences are interesting. The scenes are fast. And Spanogle really does have a great authoritative tone. So I’m going to finish it, and I’m looking forward to the second half, because I reckon that’s when the plot will start moving “as rapidly as a lethal virus.”