The First Horseman
by John Case, Carolyn Hougan (Author), Jim Hougan (Author)
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In the Book of Revelations, the Four Horsemen herald the arrival of the Apocalypse. When the First Horseman thunders forth, pestilence will spread throughout the land. For the First Horseman is Plague . . .The Spanish Flu killed thirty million people worldwide in 1918. Now with history threatening to repeat itself, a scientific expedition speeds toward a remote island in the Arctic Sea to recover strains of the lethal virus preserved under layers of ice. For Washington Post reporter Frank show more Daly, it is the story of a lifetime. But his plan to join the expedition is ruined by a ferocious storm that delays him. And when he meets up with the ship upon its return to port in Norway, it is clear something has gone wrong. Fear haunts the faces of the crew. No one will talk. And someone wants Daly to stop asking questions. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Reporter/detective novel meets virus thriller. The First Horseman follows the investigation of Frank Daly, a reporter, into what was meant to be a straight forward archaeological dig to research cadavers infected with the 1918 Spanish 'Flu.
Enter cover ups, a crazy religious cult, mysterious FBI agents and a deadly virus back from the dead.
It's not a terrible book, certainly passes the time in an entertaining fashion but nothing really stands out about it either. It's resoundingly average.
If one wanted detective/reporter story there's better books, such as Michael Connolly, and if one wanted a good virus thriller there's Richard Preston's The Hot Zone which not only is an excellent story but is also true. That's true as in non fiction, show more not true as in "based on a true story". show less
Enter cover ups, a crazy religious cult, mysterious FBI agents and a deadly virus back from the dead.
It's not a terrible book, certainly passes the time in an entertaining fashion but nothing really stands out about it either. It's resoundingly average.
If one wanted detective/reporter story there's better books, such as Michael Connolly, and if one wanted a good virus thriller there's Richard Preston's The Hot Zone which not only is an excellent story but is also true. That's true as in non fiction, show more not true as in "based on a true story". show less
Surprisingly good thriller. I was franticly turning the pages to see what was going to happen. It is scary to think that this exact plot could be happening right now.
Interesting, well written story about a reporter who uncovers a plot to release a manufactured plague of Spanish Flu on the world.
The plot is very interesting. And the villain of the story could very well be a real person.
Spreading the Spanish Flu in 1999 via a new vector by cult/revolutionarists.
Een gevluchte Noord-Koreaan onthult dat in een dorpje de bevolking is uitgemoord nadat een variatie van de Spaanse griep was uitgebroken. Was er hier sprake van experimenten met biologische wapens? Een Amerikaanse expeditie probeert in de permafrost van Spitsbergen, waar aan die griep overleden zeelieden begraven liggen, het virus te bemachtigen om een vaccin te kunnen maken. Anderen zijn hen echter voor geweest. Een poging tot geheimhouding mislukt vanwege de vasthoudendheid van journalist Frank Daly, maar het stellen van vragen is eigenlijk al dodelijk gevaarlijk. De Noord-Koreanen als boosdoeners doen het wel in een politiek geladen thriller, maar men mag zich afvragen of de ergste boosdoeners niet degenen zijn die zogenaamd in het show more belang van het land allerlei informatie onder de pet willen houden en daarbij voor niets terugdeinzen. Dat gegeven wordt goed uitgewerkt en is ook waar het echt om draait. Een spannende thriller met een goed verhaal die zonder meer veel lezers zal aanspreken. show less
Dec 20, 2010Dutch
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Recent reports that the 1918 flu virus, source of history's most lethal pandemic, might be preserved inside the bodies of five Norwegian miners buried beneath the permafrost on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen make this novel especially timely. Moving in dated chapters through the spring into the summer months of 1998, this tense thriller turns that story into a "secular apocalypse," show more which begins when a North Korean medical officer flees across the DMZ to report that his isolated village was first devastated by a strange sickness, then destroyed and completely buried by the military. A team of American microbiologists, whose application to exhume the Spitsbergen bodies has been denied, suddenly finds its expedition funded by a foundation from which they hadn't even sought money. Frank Daly, a Washington Post reporter scheduled to join the expedition, is grounded in Archangel, and when he meets the icebreaker Rex Mundi on its return to Norway, he finds the pier closed and no one from the expedition willing to talk to him?a sure incentive for any true reporter to pursue the story to the death, which Daly very nearly does. Although the setup is in some ways more gripping than the action payoff of the novel's second half, pseudonymous D.C. reporter Case (The Gemini Code) breathes excitement into his topical story. Especially memorable is the microwave death of one character, leaving behind just a tiny handful of soot. show less
added by cmwilson101
The fictional bioterror of Richard Preston's The Cobra Event was scary enough, but The First Horseman is based on the real Spanish flu, a hideous virus that killed over 20 million people in 1918. From the opening pages, this second novel by investigative reporter John Case (author of The Genesis Code) thrusts readers into the thick of a rapid-fire plot. In New York, a man and a woman are show more murdered at their home by a cult whose motivations remain mysterious. Immediately, the action shifts to Tasi-ko, North Korea, where a medical worker flees to the mountains to escape a disease that has decimated his village. While he looks on from his hiding spot, North Korean soldiers pour into Tasi-ko and incinerate it and all of its suffering inhabitants. The CIA investigates the events at Tasi-ko, and realizing that the disease could well be a hybrid Spanish flu being tested as a biological weapon, recruits a team of American scientists to uncover the only known sample of the 1918 pandemic--which is frozen into the bodies of miners buried in the Arctic. From there the novel traces scientists Anne Adair and Benton Kicklighter on their expedition to the frozen town of Kopervik to uncover the miners' corpses. Not knowing that the CIA is behind Adair and Kicklighter's work, Washington Post reporter Frank Daly follows their story. When the scientists return empty-handed, though, he begins to suspect that a medical curiosity is on the verge of becoming a global catastrophe.
The strength of the novel is the eerie suspense that Case sustains by revealing only enough about the Korean plot and the Temple of Light cult to keep the reader fully engaged and wanting more. While Case doesn't spend much time delving into the lives and motivations of his characters, the Spanish flu is the real star. Case propels the novel with the constant reminder that a new plague is on the verge of exploding, and his several enigmatic subplots keep you turning the pages and praying that this is only fiction. show less
The strength of the novel is the eerie suspense that Case sustains by revealing only enough about the Korean plot and the Temple of Light cult to keep the reader fully engaged and wanting more. While Case doesn't spend much time delving into the lives and motivations of his characters, the Spanish flu is the real star. Case propels the novel with the constant reminder that a new plague is on the verge of exploding, and his several enigmatic subplots keep you turning the pages and praying that this is only fiction. show less
added by cmwilson101
Author Information
13+ Works 3,743 Members
Jim Hougan is an award-winning journalist, a former Washington editor of Harper's Magazine, and the author of two investigative works of nonfiction: Spooks and Secret Agenda. Writing with his wife under the pseudonym John Case, he has published six thrillers, including New York Times bestsellers such as The Genesis Code and The First Horseman. show more Executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning Confessions of a Dangerous Man, Hougan worked with Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes and has produced investigative documentaries about the Jonestown massacre and the Russian Mafia, among other topics. show less
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1998
- People/Characters
- Frank Daly; Anne Adair; Benton Kicklighter; Neal Gleason; Luc Solange; Susannah Demjanuk
- Important places
- Washington, D.C., USA; New York, New York, USA; Archangelsk, Russia; Spitsbergen, Norway; Tasi-ko, North Korea; Lake Placid, New York, USA
- Epigraph
- Pledge of the German Gunners
'...and most of all, they shall not construct any poisoned globes, not other sorts of pyrobolic inventions, in which he shall introduce no poison whatsoever, besides which, they shall never... (show all) employ them for the ruin and destruction of men, because the first inventors of our art though such actions as unjust among themselves as unworthy of a man of heart and a real soldier.'
From: Siemienowicz, C., Grand Art d'Artillerie (1650),
as quoted by Appfel, J.
'Les projectiles toxiques en 1650,'
March 1929, p.234 - First words
- The Hudson Valley
November 11, 1997
Tommy was nervous. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And he's stuck in this cheap hotel, somewhere in Russia...
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- Popularity
- 30,875
- Reviews
- 11
- Rating
- (3.42)
- Languages
- 7 — Dutch, English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 36
- ASINs
- 9
