The Red Death by Birgitte Märgen

Self-published, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1729311196

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

The Red Death is a thrilling tale of a deadly pandemic. The Red Death is caused by an unknown bacterium that caused an ancient pandemic before Pasteurella pestis and the Black Death, and now it has re-emerged in New York City. The Red Death causes hemorrhagic nodules in the lungs; its victims vomit blood as their lungs fill with it, and death follows within days of infection.Starting off with a few deaths, the story traces the spread and exponential growth of the epidemic.

The cast of characters includes a team of local CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) investigators in hazmat-suits, a rebuffed bacteriologist at the CDC national headquarters and a has-been paleoanthropologist in Las Vegas. What links the early victims? How is the disease spread? These are some of the questions they face.

Decades ago, the paleoanthropologist wrote about an ancient pandemic and an indigenous Amazonian tribe that was resistant to the disease.  His work was ridiculed, and he retreated into the bars in Las Vegas, but he has a sample of a rare plant that might have protected the tribe from the disease. Why won’t the CDC director authorize research on a vaccine?

Just as the number of victims increases exponentially, the action in New York City, Milwaukee, and the Amazon intensifies. Rival leaders of the Motombu tribe face off in a fight to the death, with the fate of the research team hanging in the balance. Will the leader of the breakaway cannibal faction win, dooming millions to the Red Death? Or, will the researchers’ friend triumph and lead them to the plant that could end the pandemic?

The author describes the problems CDC investigators and researchers face and their techniques. However, I think that her use of the term “vaccine” might not be appropriate. Vaccines usually contain attenuated microbes or their antigens that stimulate the recipient’s immune system, but in this book, a CDC investigator is infected and saves herself by injecting the paleoanthropologist’s decades-old plant extract. The extract might contain an antibiotic or an adjuvant to activate the immune system, but it probably doesn’t have bacterial antigens. Nevertheless, The Red Death is a worthwhile read. Recommended.

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee