Code Zero

January 27, 2014
Bestseller Maberry’s sequel to 2009’s Patient Zero, his sixth starring Joe Ledger of the ultrasecret Department of Military Science (after 2013’s Extinction Machine), does a good job of making its variation on the zombie menace plausible. A copy of VaultBreaker, “the absolute bleeding edge of cybersecurity technology,” designed to keep America’s foes from turning off its energy grid, has fallen into the wrong hands—specifically, those of an Asian woman who calls herself Mother Night, the liaison to a team of cyberhackers from China and other unfriendly foreign countries. Ledger and his team take what appear to be successful steps to thwart the threat posed by these hackers, but his optimism proves to be ill-founded. The Berserkers, monsters believed to have been wiped out, resurface and go on the attack, spreading infections that turn people into ravenous killers. Maberry’s shout-outs to popular culture’s depictions of zombies lessens the tension and feeling of doom, albeit just slightly. Agent: Sara Crowe, Harvey Klinger Inc.

Starred review from February 1, 2014
Faithful readers of the Joe Ledger series, of which this is the sixth volume, might be confused by the cover blurb calling this the sequel to Patient Zero, since that was the first book in the series. But the blurb is correct: although the novel takes place in its proper sequencethere are references to events that took place in earlier booksthe story involves elements introduced in the series debut, which means Joe and his team from the ultra-elite Department of Military Sciences (DMS) are going to be battling more zombies, but tougher and more dangerous than anything they've seen before. The person responsible for these new-breed walking dead, and for various other technological and biological attacks on the U.S., appears to be a woman who calls herself Mother Night. And when the DMS figures out who Mother Night really is, they realize they're in for their deadliest fight yet. Sure, the series follows a pretty strict formulaJoe and his DMS team encounter a seemingly supernatural threat that has a twisted scientific explanation; they go up against a fiendishly clever supervillain; they save the world; and they do it all in about 450 pagesbut when a formula is this entertaining, is anyone going to complain about it? Like Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Ledger is a hard-edged military man with a deep moral core and a razor-sharp mind; in a series of books about zombies and vampires and biblical plagues, he's the human center, a comforting, familiar face in a world of unfamiliar things. Top-grade horror fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)