And who knows? Echoes in tenement halls ... but it's in a very high class high-rise that our horror begins, when a poor little rich girl returns from her western getaway feeling a little blue. And before you know it she's taken a turn for the worst, and winds up a Jane Doe on the morgue slab. And the chain of infection has already begun. Before it's all finished, it'll burn through Harlem, Uptown, 42nd Street, every rat-infested slum and every other glittering high-rise in the whole of NYC. It's THE BLACK DEATH, and it's gonna knock us back to the Dark Ages!
There's fear overhead, there's fear overground.
Lookit that cover! One nasty rat, ready to take on the Big Apple! Much better than the usual sterile test tubes and petri dishes and microscopes that festoon a lot of disease thrillers. And that's the kind of story we get inside - gritty, dirty, centered on the streets and the people. Cravens and Marr use some eloquent interiors of Yersinia pestis at war within its human hosts as contrast to the outer reality of medicine and science as human practices, bound in by a myriad of human structures. Later on, when things have gotten truly bad, our protagonist Dr. David Hart reflects on how impossible it was to see exactly how things were going to break down ... but then, he realizes, there was always that fear, that foreknowledge, that something was wrong. His health department tried its best, but they're overloaded and underfunded when they catch this new blip on their radar. Maybe it's nothing, the bureaucrats and politicians hope ... but we know better, oh yes.
For minor spoilers, there's an excellent shift halfway through the novel wherein Dr. Hart is incapacitated by the plague. When he wakes up it's in an abandoned hospital. Weak, addled, alone, he ventures outside and finds a whole new world - or rather, the end of the world. And the novel kicks into high gear, with a new, apocalyptic churn of horrors. Our gossamer civilization is burning at both ends and the stage is set for scenes more depraved than the worst phantasmagoria from Bosch.
Meanwhile, in the bowels of Washington a different kind of vermin are scuttling around. The current crisis has whipped them into their own fevered frenzy, desperate to cement their positions in the "permanent state" that runs deeper than any elected position, including the president. These paranoid ciphers trust no one and love nothing, and there's no depravity they won't indulge for national security: witness their calm debate over "full neutralization of all non-rodent carriers" ... they're talking about us, baby! Here the authors give us more historical background of the kind we got in The Nightmare Factor: Operation Sea-Spray again, biowarfare in Vietnam, and the myriad chemical/biological/ballistic assassination plots against Castro. In yet another example of their cynical nihilism, our DC demons wonder whether they can frame the NYC plague as a Cuban plot in order to finally pull off the invasion/counterrevolution they've been slavering at for decades now. Some are afraid the plague may be traced back to their own dark doings, and in another example of the authors' grounded realism there is no smoking gun to prove or disprove this. We all must live with uncertainty, including the possible conspirators.
The authors don't skimp on any aspect of the story. The horror is bloody disgusting, the tension ratcheted to nerve wracking tightness. From Dr. Hart's nighttime walks - an escape from himself and the frantic pace of modern life - to Nurse Dolores Rodriguez and her quietly carried torch for the good doctor there isn't a false character note. Rodriguez is sketched as a believably, beautifully strange person, one of those who move through life silently, never complaining nor hinting at the vast reserves of strength within. She isn't the only one who gets quick, professional description that sticks with us whether they live, die, or disappear into the unknown. Our supporting cast include the "Blackhawks" nurses of the health department: a team of Black, hispanic and "oriental" gals beating feet through the worst neighborhoods in the city tracking down bugs. Thankless, dangerous, necessary work. Cravens and Marr effortlessly illustrate one of the major contradictions of modern life: we're all individuals but we can't escape our boxes of race, class, sex, the lines that sort us out into the whole stinking mix of humanity, even as we yearn to be recognized for ourselves and to fulfill our roles the best we can. These invisible lines can have catastrophic effects during a crisis, for individuals and outwards.
By the time this whole bloody business is over we'll be witness to extermination squads, nerve gas delivered by top secret "monopod" drones, the ultimate heights of the human spirit and depths of its depravity. For a historic scale and soul shattering horror, Cravens and Marr's The Black Death earns a full four suppurating buboes out of four!
Highly recommended.
Ballantine Books, 1978 (original pub. 1977)
John S. Marr followed up in 1998 with the second novel THE ELEVENTH PLAGUE, and in 2000 with third novel WORMWOOD. He has since ginned up a series of novels for young adults.
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