10. Epidemic! by Frank G. Slaughter

I had to pick this one up as it is about a disease catastrophe. I had some slight reservations that I couldn't put my finger on. They were revealed as I read the book. I was hoping and the trade dress and slim paperback somewhat suggested that I would be getting an apocalyptic disease story.  I mean it's about the Black Plague hitting New York in the beginning of that city's roughest period, coinciding with major garbage strikes, the residential arson campaigns by landlords against the poor, crime wave, etc.  Well I know now that Frank Slaughter was a true best-seller middle-brow writer, the kind who walks that thin and often somewhat boring line between entertainment and literature.  It's oddly serious and though a lot of shit goes down, it all feels distant and never really loses control.  It was also much longer than it physically looked.  Took me a while to read.

The beginning is promising. A ship comes in to the NY harbour with a sketchy captain and a drunken first mate.  They took on cheap labour and flea-infested rats in Cameroon, which was having a revolution so there was no news on the outbreak of the plague there.  Slaughter goes into some detail on how the disease actually works, which was cool.  The captain is already sick but his priority is to get to his hot to trot waitress, Gladys.  The rats, of course, are just super psyched to get off the boat to the piles of rotting garbage.  I always love the narrative of the vector spread in disease books.  It's an opportunity for the author to really have some fun with little vignettes, neat characters and locations.  I haven't read it since I was young, but currently the opening of Stephen King's The Stand is a truly memorable example.  Here it is kind of fun, we get Gladys and the captain, whose tryst goes terribly awry (he dies on her couch and she throws him out her window!), a homeless alcoholic who was sleeping near the docks with whom the rats cuddled and a few other threads from there.

Unfortunately, the fun stops here as we transition to the main narrative, which centers around a hospital in Manhattan next to a promising new housing development.  The main character is a world-class immunologist who is on temporary leave from the U.N.  He is absolutely the perfect person to be in charge of fighting the epidemic.  He is in a love triangle with his close friend, surgeon Bob, and the nurse Eve.  There is also a conflict with the irascible tycoon who is paying for the housing development and a police inspector trying to hunt out the Commie (though this word is never used) infiltrator arming the youth gangs who are vandalizing the project.

As you can see, there is a lot going on.  Unfortunately, the bulk of the narrative is either very detailed surgical procedures (Slaughter was a doctor and this was his area of expertise, so they seem accurate) or board rooms of men discussing their plans to fight the epidemic.  I think for some people, this kind of book is quite engaging.  It's a thought experiment.  What would you do if you were in charge of NYC in 1961 and the black plague arrived?  Two comparisons came to mind when I was reading this book.  It's like one of those 60s action movies with the cool poster but when you watch it it's mainly men sitting in unpleasant rooms talking or a tabletop RPG session where the players spend the entire time planning what they are going to do.  I speak only for myself, but I need to get to the action.

From a sociopolitical perspective, this book is an odd mix.  It has currents of conservative thought with its portrayal of commie-driven otherwise mindless bad people.  And yet also strongly argues for public medicine and communal, socially-cohesive policy when it comes to things like vaccines and quarantines.  I don't think Slaughter was particularly political and did not think too deeply about politics, but it is an interesting snapshot of a very different worldview about disease management than we see today.  Oh yes, I also have to give Frank points for his portrayal of Eve, the nurse.  She is actually quite tough and the big tension between her and the immunologist is that he keeps trying to protect her and cut her out of dangerous situations and she is just like fuck that and actually ends up saving the day with straight-up physical action against the commie.  Spoiler alert but this is the reason she chooses to go with the more down-to-earth surgeon, because he will not keep her in a glass cage.