Nick reviews Patient Zero

Patient Zero
by Jonathan Maberry
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release Date: March 3rd 2009
Edition: Paperback 421 pages

What the back of the book has to say...

When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there's either something wrong with your world or something wrong with your skills... and there's nothing wrong with Joe Ledger's skills.  And that's both a good, and a bad thing.  It's good because he's a Baltimore detective that has just been secretly recruited by the government to lead a new taskforce created to deal with the problems that Homeland Security can't handle. This rapid response group is called the Department of Military Sciences or the DMS for short. It's bad because his first mission is to help stop a group of terrorists from releasing a dreadful bio-weapon that can turn ordinary people into zombies. The fate of the world hangs in the balance....

Likes:
I would say that there we quite a lot of different things that made me really enjoy this book. Everything from the "full of testosterone" main character, the over-technical specifications of everyone's weapon, and especially, a peek into what might be the cause of the zombie apocalypse that takes place in "Rot & Ruin." While Joe Ledger might be the "No BS I'm a man" kind of character that some readers would think is a jerk, he is actually one of my favorite type of characters. A very thick shell that takes nothing from anyone but quite the respectful, gentle, heart of gold kind of guy in the inside. He doesn't show it much but when he does, you just have to give the guy his respect.

Dislikes:
While I did enjoy this book, much like everything I've read from Mr. Maberry, there were things I did dislike. The beginning first part of the book was a bit of a drag. What made it worse, since this book was an adult book, there were quite a bit of words on the page. Every time I thought I was making some progress in the slow part of the book, I really only made it through 2 or 3 pages. Thankfully, once the action picked up after the first 1/3 of the book, I flew through it. I also hated reading about the "villains" of the book. They weren't interesting, their motives were stupid, and all they could do was stab each other in back over and over again.

Who would I recommend this to:
If you are a guy, you would most likely enjoy this book. Since I'm only talking to 2 or 3 of you followers out there, this won't matter all too much. Ladies, if you have read and enjoyed the "Rot & Ruin" series and would like to read more about Captain Joe, one of the survivors of First Night, then you should give this book a try. Despite it being a very manly book and a bit over-technical, it is quite a good read. Joe does make a cameo appearance in "Flesh & Bone," the 3rd book in the "Rot & Ruin" series. Jonathan Maberry, once again, does not disappoint.