It's my turn on the BlogTour We All Fall Down by Daniel Kalla. It's a fast-paced bio-chemical suspense thriller that presents a frighteningly realistic scenario.
Daniel Kalla is the international bestselling author of Pandemic, Resistance, Rage Therapy, Blood Lies, Cold Plague, and Of Flesh and Blood. His books have been translated into eleven languages, and two novels have been optioned for film. Kalla practices emergency medicine in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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Buy We All Fall Down
About the book
A critically ill patient lies dying in a remote town in Italy. Alana Vaughn, an infectious diseases expert with NATO, receives a desperate call – she must fly to Italy immediately and confirm what everyone already suspects… that the dying woman has the plague, a merciless disease that kills in days.
When Alana arrives, her worst fears are confirmed. But the patient isn’t just dying of the plague – she has the strain of the plague known as the Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, which eight hundred years ago killed more than a quarter of the world’s population.
And if Alana and her counterpart at the World Health Organisation, Byron Menke, can’t track down the source of the disease…then it will be the end of them all.
I think Kalla likes preying on our inner fears and playing with a certain paranoia that lives inside the majority of us. Then again it's not paranoia when it's a real threat, and biological weapons are a threat in our day and age.
Governments, pharma and weapons companies play around with synthetic and genetically modified or engineered viruses and bacteria to create the perfect bio-weapon or to create antidotes for the aforementioned. As if that wasn't enough scientists have also gone looking for diseases or viruses, such as the Spanish influenza to be able to prevent further pandemics of this nature. In our area they dug up the son of an aristocratic family, who died of the Spanish flu in 1919. The virus could have a similar genetic structure to the modern bird flu. The hope was that the lead coffin he was buried in may have preserved the virus.
The problem with that, in my opinion, is that they are the ones circulating deadly viruses, which then could possibly fall into the wrong hands or accidentally be reintroduced into the world.
The story takes us back in time, as we are made privy to the thoughts and journal entries of a physician or barber surgeon, Rafael Pasqua, in the midst of the Black plague, and then to the present as the disease rips through modern day civilisation like a wave of destruction. In the present, Alana and Nico are desperate to find patient zero or the point of origin in the hopes of finding out how to stop it from spreading. Was it an accident or is this the worst case scenario - a terrorist attack? Kalla presents an interesting juxtaposition between the scapegoating of the Jews then and the groups who are blamed for this new outbreak.
All of the above may seem to veer off-topic, but the principle is the same when it comes to this plot, the Black Death, and the lengths some people are willing to go to, to make scientific breakthroughs or create weapons. The kind of weapons that could potentially wipe out entire countries and populations.
It's a fast-paced bio-chemical suspense thriller with hints of historical fiction, that presents a frighteningly realistic scenario. What could be scarier than knowing you can't see the weapon or defend yourself against it if it comes for you or your loved ones.
Buy We All Fall Down at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK; pub date 2 May 2019. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Simon and Schuster.
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