The Black Death Re-Read

Re-Read: 'The Black Death' by Gwyneth Cravens and John S. Marr

4 / 5 Stars

 

It's been nearly 8 years since I last read 'The Black Death,' which first was published in hardcover in 1977, with this Ballantine Books paperback released in March 1978. The blanket of heat and humidity that has settled over the northeast this Summer reminded me of the novel and prompted me to sit down and re-read it.

'Death' is set in New York City in the mid-1970s, a city in crisis from strikes, budget cuts, crime, malfeasance, and inept political leadership. Piles of garbage lie festering in the late Summer heat. All of these things are ideal to foster an outbreak of highly transmissible pneumonic plague.

 

David Hart, an epidemiologist with the city's Bureau of Preventable Diseases, gets word of a case with a troubling presentation, a case with features common to plague. Within days, there are secondary infections and it is clear that a pathogen of unusual virulence is loose in the city's upper and under classes. But New York's politicians and bureaucrats are loath to declare any emergency that would cause a 'panic' in an already stressed infrastructure. Hart tries to do what he can he prevent an epidemic from starting, but the odds are against him..........

 

I gave 'The Black Death' a Four Star Rating in my initial read and I am comfortable with retaining that score in my re-read. The only weak feature in the novel is the inclusion of a 70s staple villain, the megalomaniacal general anxious to gain glory from utilizing cruel measures to stamp out the infection. But overall, this novel remains "....a very entertaining medical thriller and a great evocation of the era in which the Rolling Stones song 'Shattered' summed up the state of New York City."