Monday, June 25, 2012

12.21-Dustin Thomason

12.21


Dustin Thomason

Dial, Aug 7 2012, $27.00

ISBN 9780385341400



On December 11, 2012 in Los Angeles, Presbyterian Hospital’s third-year resident Michaela Thane calls Dr. Gabriel Stanton, head of CDC’s Prion Center. She says she believes she believes they have a case of Prion Disease. Stanton scoffs at Thane’s assertion until she says he seems to suffer from fatal familial insomnia (FFI), but he changes his mind when she also mentions the tests indicate the patient had not slept in a week. Stanton rushes to over to Presbyterian.



Nearby at the Getty Museum, epigraphist Chel Manu deciphers a Mayan codex just given to her by a distraught Hector Gutierrez. As she begins to understand why her Mayan heritage ancestors suddenly vanished and what December 21, 2012 means, Michaela’s diagnosis proves correct and soon the greater metropolitan area is quarantined as an epidemic of Prion disease has spread to thousands. To understand the patient they bring in Manu. Soon Stanton and Manu race to the Guatemalan jungle to find a cure to the spreading FFI, which will blanket the world by December 21, 2012.



This is a tremendous medical-Mayan doomsday thriller that grips readers from the moment Thane calls Stanton and never slows down as the clock is running out on preventing a pandemic end of the world. Fast-paced throughout, readers will short list this superb tale as one of the best thrillers of the year.



Harriet Klausner

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