Wednesday, April 15, 2009

The Strain-Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Strain
Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
Morrow, Jun 2 2009, $26.99
ISBN 9780061558238

The jumbo jet from Berlin has landed at JFK and is taxiing to the gate when abruptly something weird and horrific happens as it suddenly goes pitch dark with no sounds whatsoever; every electric and electronic device is silent. As emergency crews stand by waiting to enter, a door opens for no apparent reason. CDC NYC epidemiologist Dr. Ephraim Goodweather enters the dark plane only to find a mass graveyard. Every passenger and crew, except for four shocked bewildered survivors, was drained of their blood.

Although Ephraim strongly pushed quarantining the survivors, he is overruled due to their rights. They leave and soon afterward the corpses vanish. Desperate as nothing goes according to standard procedures, Eph begins to heed the advice of an elderly Manhattan Holocaust survivor pawnbroker Abraham Setrakian who insists a master vampire has come to America as a total lunar eclipse is coming.

With homage to Stoker from the modernizing the classic ship scene to Abraham and the Count, Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan provide a super vampire thriller in a current day setting. Ironically this is a throwback to the days when vampires were simply evil predators dining on human blood. THE STRAIN is fast-paced from the moment the plane suddenly stops moving and goes entirely dark as this thriller will be hard to put down apparently a master vampire invades America just before a total lunar eclipse, the first of this kind in four centuries.

Harriet Klausner

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