The horror genre and its close cousin, the horror film, has always been susceptible to fads. In the 50s, it was the atomic holocaust and its mutant monsters. in the 60s and 70s, thanks to Robert Bloch's Psycho, it was serial killers. For the 70s on, Vampires ruled with its evil nephew the paranormal romance making a splash in the 90s and on. All these themes existed before, surfaces often, and will continue to be visited by the horror writers and screenwriters. Yet each one had its particular heyday.Nowadays it is the zombie novel.You can't walk through the book store without a zombie novel smacking you in the face. There's some pretty bad ones out there. Fortunately, Ben Tripp's novel of zombie apocalypse is one of the good ones. He does a lot of things right in this thrilling horror epic.
First, his zombies just don't urgh and argh. We never know for sure what the cause of the zombie plaque is but the author strongly hints at the idea of a viral epidemic. At first the zombies are the mindless quality yet they evolve to something else and that is what makes them interesting. The reader is treated to a changing threat leading to a intense and surprising ending.
Second, while the author gives us some horrific monsters, he also knows that man is the ultimate danger. In many ways this is more of a post-apocalyptic survival tale pitting man (and woman) against themselves. Tripp appears to take Sartre's admonition that Hell is other people quite seriously. Another nice touch is the author's update to the 21st century by giving us a new boogeyman in our social-political spectrum; a Black-water like private military army. Tripp's knowledge and use of current events such as the Iraq War nicely accents this thriller.
Third, Tripp has created a very strong female protagonist, a sheriff named Danny Adelman that is easy to like and root for. This also brings up one of the weaker aspects of this novel and that is her first motive for her actions. In the first chapter, Danny's baby sister runs away . We learn a lot about Danny but the sister remains elusive as is Danny's reason for taking risky and sometimes incomprehensible actions to find her. It is a minor complaint but annoying since there is so much going on with the survivors that this sub-quest seems unneeded.
Yet this is a riveting horror novel combining the best of adventure, survival tales and zombie horror. I highly recommend it to any zombie fans but also to those who simply love a good adventure yarn.
