The Satan Bug
14 July 2007 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nuranarApparently I have an audience that enjoys the so-called reviews I thought I was inflicting on my friends list. This does flatter me, I admit. *g* Sometimes I get really lazy and don't want to do them; writing IS an effort, particularly when I want to do a good job. But I really need to get this one taken care of before the details and my impressions fade. The plot in this one isn't so impossible to discuss as it was for Fear Is the Key (see my so-subtle review here), so I can elaborate a bit.
Alistair MacLean's The Satan Bug
This books is centered about the possibility of biological warfare, or as they put it in 1962, "germ warfare". It's the only one of MacLean's stories I've yet read that is set wholly in England itself. The extremely high-security facility for developing germ warfare has been broken into - or broken out of - and two dangerous diseases have been taken. One is the Satan Bug of the title. Who has them, and what will they use them for? (Trust me, you won't guess.)
The action of the story develops with surprising slowness, at least initially. First-person narrator Pierre Cavell assists with the investigation, which is structured like a typical mystery with crime scene investigation, following up clues, and questioning witnesses and suspects. Of course it picks up, and when a crisis is reached, things develop rapidly.
Cavell himself is somewhat shady; trust me, MacLean's layers of deception are not absent. He is in a subtle way one of MacLean's more unusual characters; for starters, he has two physical handicaps - a crippled leg that had been crushed by a tank, and a nearly-blind eye from a shell explosion, both earned in the war. He is also married; his wife Mary is another of MacLean's minor but wholly admirable females. I love how MacLean balances the extraordinary with the ordinary; if his protagonist is unusual in one aspect, he is terribly ordinary in another. This balance of the fantastic with extreme realism is part of why MacLean's stories are so compelling.
I'm very good at suspending disbelief to enjoy a story; I'm also very rarely emotionally caught up in a story. (Unless it's anger at stupid characters or writing, which is scarcely what the author intended.) But the descriptions of the power of these germs actually scared me. I remember being so very glad that I am separated by 45 years and thousands of miles from the hypothetical scene of action - that's how intensely it affected me. And yet... the Satan Bug in question is the granddaddy of all plagues. Forget about the Black Death. Imagine the worst case scenario for any epidemic - I mean it, literally the worst possible case - and you'll have what the Satan Bug would do. As simple as that.
With the skill I've come to expect, MacLean doesn't dwell on the horror, even in the first-person narration. He makes the situation horrifyingly clear, and moves on. The tone is overall very grim, but it's not the personal, back-of-the-mind grief of Fear Is the Key. And the humor is still there. I figure I've talked about it in enough reviews; here's a paragraph from near to the end.
Cavell is trying to cross a deserted London railyard without being detected. It is in complete blackout.
As you can see, if MacLean's writing has any fault it's his tendency to very long sentences. It's something I can easily forgive, since it's simply an old-fashioned style (see Dickens!) and I'm prone to it myself.
So overall, another winner for Mr. MacLean. *applause*
Alistair MacLean's The Satan Bug
This books is centered about the possibility of biological warfare, or as they put it in 1962, "germ warfare". It's the only one of MacLean's stories I've yet read that is set wholly in England itself. The extremely high-security facility for developing germ warfare has been broken into - or broken out of - and two dangerous diseases have been taken. One is the Satan Bug of the title. Who has them, and what will they use them for? (Trust me, you won't guess.)
The action of the story develops with surprising slowness, at least initially. First-person narrator Pierre Cavell assists with the investigation, which is structured like a typical mystery with crime scene investigation, following up clues, and questioning witnesses and suspects. Of course it picks up, and when a crisis is reached, things develop rapidly.
Cavell himself is somewhat shady; trust me, MacLean's layers of deception are not absent. He is in a subtle way one of MacLean's more unusual characters; for starters, he has two physical handicaps - a crippled leg that had been crushed by a tank, and a nearly-blind eye from a shell explosion, both earned in the war. He is also married; his wife Mary is another of MacLean's minor but wholly admirable females. I love how MacLean balances the extraordinary with the ordinary; if his protagonist is unusual in one aspect, he is terribly ordinary in another. This balance of the fantastic with extreme realism is part of why MacLean's stories are so compelling.
I'm very good at suspending disbelief to enjoy a story; I'm also very rarely emotionally caught up in a story. (Unless it's anger at stupid characters or writing, which is scarcely what the author intended.) But the descriptions of the power of these germs actually scared me. I remember being so very glad that I am separated by 45 years and thousands of miles from the hypothetical scene of action - that's how intensely it affected me. And yet... the Satan Bug in question is the granddaddy of all plagues. Forget about the Black Death. Imagine the worst case scenario for any epidemic - I mean it, literally the worst possible case - and you'll have what the Satan Bug would do. As simple as that.
With the skill I've come to expect, MacLean doesn't dwell on the horror, even in the first-person narration. He makes the situation horrifyingly clear, and moves on. The tone is overall very grim, but it's not the personal, back-of-the-mind grief of Fear Is the Key. And the humor is still there. I figure I've talked about it in enough reviews; here's a paragraph from near to the end.
Cavell is trying to cross a deserted London railyard without being detected. It is in complete blackout.
The reference book compilers who assert that Clapham Junction has more sets of parallel tracks than any place in Britain wouldn't go around making silly statements like that if they'd try this lot on a pitch black October night with the sleety rain falling about their ears. There wasn't a single piece of ironware in the whole interminable width of those tracks that I didn't find that night, usually with my ankles and shins. Railway lines, wires, signalling gear, switch gear, hydrants, platforms where there shouldn't have been platforms--I found them all. To add to my discomfort the burnt cork that had been so heavily rubbed into my face and hands was beginning to run, and burnt cork tastes exactly as you would expect it to taste: and when it gets in your eyes it hurts. The only hazard I didn't have to contend with was live rails--the power had been switched off.
As you can see, if MacLean's writing has any fault it's his tendency to very long sentences. It's something I can easily forgive, since it's simply an old-fashioned style (see Dickens!) and I'm prone to it myself.
So overall, another winner for Mr. MacLean. *applause*
