The End Of October by Lawrence Wright

The End Of October by Lawrence Wright
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller
Rating: 4 stars
Reviewed by Fern

In this riveting medical thriller–from the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author–Dr. Henry Parsons, an unlikely but appealing hero, races to find the origins and cure of a mysterious new killer virus as it brings the world to its knees.

At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When Henry Parsons–microbiologist, epidemiologist–travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city . . . A Russian émigré, a woman who has risen to deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security, scrambles to mount a response to what may be an act of biowarfare . . . Already-fraying global relations begin to snap, one by one, in the face of a pandemic . . . Henry’s wife, Jill, and their children face diminishing odds of survival in Atlanta . . . And the disease slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions–scientific, religious, governmental–and decimating the population. As packed with suspense as it is with the fascinating history of viral diseases, Lawrence Wright has given us a full-tilt, electrifying, one-of-a-kind thriller.

A race-against-time thriller as one man must find the origins for a new killer virus that has brought the world to it’s knees.
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I’ve not read many “end of the world” or “plague” type thrillers in the last eighteen months or so for the simple reason it feels rather like we’re currently living on one of those stories and I’m feeling pretty weary of it all. But I kept on seeing good reviews for this novel and it’s in a bunch of the stores lately so I finally caved in and bought a copy because I usually really enjoy them. I’m pleased I did because this was a good story – even if many factors of it hit rather close to home right now.

Considering this book was written before Covid-19 was a reality – let alone in pretty much every major headline worldwide – I feel the author did a remarkable job, both with his research but also with a pretty fair guess as to how a lot of the politics and medical bodies worldwide would react. A major factor in my enjoyment of this story was also that even though the book is quite political and medical focused – as you would expect in a plague type of mystery-thriller story – I feel all the major characters were highly relatable. The author has a really good and relaxed style of voice and writing and this made many of the characters really enjoyable to me, I could easily empathize with them and the situation they found themselves in and even some of the smaller characters, like Bambang, who were from a different culture, a different religion and a completely different walk of life, the author showcased Bambang in such a way I could not just see where his choices and actions came from, but why he made these decisions and I could easily relate to him despite our lives being completely different. It was a lovely feeling and really got me hooked into the story.

I admit I found the start of the story (maybe the first quarter of it or less) was a little slow moving. I strongly feel readers should stick with it though because there are a number of different, complex working parts to this story (different medical facilities, different parts of the world that are extremely important and different government/political regimes) that all need to be lined up, explained and laid out in order for the reader to fully grasp how all the dominoes fall once the virus gets out of control. Understandably there are a number of different things that all happen in tandem that need to be followed and having it all lined up correctly in the beginning is crucial. So while a part of me could see the pandemic begin to flourish and I wanted to go faster and faster the author did an excellent job really getting everything outlined clearly and all the characters introduced and ready for the explosion to occur.

In many respects this is simply a really well written pandemic story but in the current circumstances I find my enjoyment and tolerance for these stories fairly short. So the fact I really enjoyed this is testament to how well it’s written and how gripping I found the tale. Better still there is a solid “wrap up” and explanation at the end and while it was a bit of a twist (and dealt with very quickly) I was pleased that those loose ties were indeed wrapped up and we weren’t left hanging not really knowing how the outbreak happened. I’m not sure all readers will be as pleased as I was with the ending – and while I didn’t guess it, I would expect some readers probably will, but it was nice to not have dangling threads of plot and wondering for a while after I’d finished the book.

A solid and enjoyable read and one I will likely come back to another time.