Bookreporter.com - BLACK MONDAY by R. Scott Reiss

BLACK MONDAY
R. Scott Reiss
Simon & Schuster
Thriller
ISBN-10: 0743297644
ISBN-13: 9780743297646

BLACK MONDAY by R. Scott Reiss is my latest nightmare-inducer. The premise of this tightly written, chilling work is fairly simple: something has invaded most of the world's gas supply, thus rendering a majority of internal combustion engines inoperative. Planes fall out of the sky, food sits rotting, people get hungry and the natives grow restless.

Reiss doesn't dawdle on the road to chaos. Just like those first few raindrops in the middle of a picnic that herald the start of a deluge, he kicks things off with a couple of early warnings: planes mysteriously crash and cars suddenly stop running. There's a scene near the beginning of BLACK MONDAY that is a homage to "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" (arguably the best-known episode of "The Twilight Zone" television series) and sets things up for the disaster and horror that is to come. Gregory Gillette has the best chance of figuring out how and why the gasoline supply has become contaminated, and what to do about it. Gillette is an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control; while his specialty is the study of disease microbes that attack human beings, it becomes evident to him that something similar is invading the world's oil supply.

While nominally assigned to a rapid response team designated to identify --- and then find some way of destroying --- the deadly microbe that has been code-named Delta-3, Gillette learns he has been backbenched by the head of the team, a longtime nemesis who is letting hubris stand in the way of salvation. Gillette quickly realizes that he must either wait helplessly with his family while their neighborhood and city descend into chaos, along with the rest of the industrialized world, or come up with a way to neutralize and destroy the Delta-3 microbe before the damage to the world (and society) becomes completely irreparable.

Disobeying orders and violating protocol, Gillette embarks on a dangerous and increasingly difficult mission across the country to find the source of the manufactured microbe that threatens to bring civilization crashing down in a matter of weeks. Even as the world is descending into chaos, however, a mysterious assassin is moving through the United States, making a series of apparently random yet carefully chosen killings that are somehow related to the biological attack on the world's oil supply --- and he is on a collision course with Gillette.

Gillette is an interesting and engaging character, whose ordinariness balances nicely with his fortitude and uncanny ability to keep asking questions until he hits the right one --- even as he is subject to baser temptations. For his part, Reiss does a wonderful job of explaining the process by which oil makes its way from a hole in the ground to the pump on the corner. If BLACK MONDAY has a weak spot, it's Reiss's occasional subtle plea for development of alternative fuel sources. Whether it be oil, wind, sun or horses, any mechanism that attempts to distribute power equally over a certain distance, regardless of source, will be vulnerable to the whim of a clown who tries to throw sand in the gears. The solution, as the book ultimately demonstrates, is to make life difficult, if not impossible, for the clown.

In any event, the "what-if" factor of BLACK MONDAY will be more than enough to make you think about it every time you unscrew your car's gas cap and wonder, for just a moment, if you're putting something in the tank besides gas. Don't miss this one.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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