QUARANTINE by Josh Webster

It's the ultimate biological warfare: a manmade strain of rabies that kills in hours, circulates in the water supply ... and the CIA has just lost control! Now a small island off the coast of Washington is facing death, madness, and the final QUARANTINE!

First impressions count. The gorgeous cover art of '70s plague thrillers like The Nightmare Factor and The Black Death set the stage for the intricate machinations within, the casts of characters adrift in new worlds of terror, the mad visions of our own world ripped apart by disaster. Quarantine's cover art, unfortunately, is all too typical of the dregs of the late '80s horror boom. Goofy ass skeleton arms hold up an idyllic forest scene, dripping with blood ... it's just plain dumb! It looks dumb and it prejudices readers like yours truly against what might be an effective thriller. Sad to say, the novel within doesn't rise above the cheesy cover.

Jaded CIA man Stone has a plan to cash out of his career: sell the manmade rabies strain to Saddam Hussein! The former dictator of Iraq is unnamed, but the novel gives enough context of a secular ruler facing down the Ayatollah in a grueling war of attrition. Stone himself enjoys the idea of Khomeini in the final throes of madness, barking out orders to lackeys as his brain is devoured by the rabies strain. Author Webster is most effective with his nastier characters like Stone and his lackeys, while his good guys deliver overdoses of treacle with their sob stories and cutesy family lives. Our hero Dr. Lockton has a dead wife and a kid with cystic fibrosis, leaving him vulnerable to Stone's offer of paid medical for life if he helps design the ultimate killer. Stone sets him up with a beautiful cabin and a high tech lab on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound, and of course through Stone's double dealings the virus gets loose and the island's inhabitants become grist for the cheap horror mill. That's how it all feels: like a slasher film setup, as the virus drives its victims into a murderous rage that sees them biting, bashing, and slashing the uninfected. There's no sense of reality, of life beyond the narrative, and as soon as characters are introduced they get instantly slotted into roles as victims, villains, and set dressing. The novel also lacks the medical/scientific power of The Nightmare Factor and The Black Death: there's a little bit about the virus gripping people's brain with madness but it all feels pretty rote, as do the various gory ways people die. Webster strings it all together competently enough, but the final product just isn't worth it.

For a limp, unsatisfying attempt at horror, Quarantine earns one rabies virus out of four:

Worldwide Books, 1988