The Mad Death
By Nigel Slater
1983 Granada
Paperback, 256 pages
Rabies in
Britain? Not again! Remember David Anne’s Rabid (reviewed in Midnight
Magazine #4)? Remember Jack Ramsey’s The Rage? Yes, it had been done
before (both aforementioned books were published in
1977) but like a moth to a flame, I keep coming back for more.
This one
starts with a cat, then a fox, then...a possible
epidemic. Our hero, Viv Tait, is a veterinarian with a bad attitude. It seems that he likes animals a lot more than humans.
In the scene where we meet him, he is wearing a “Gerbils Role OK” T-shirt. He
is short tempered, straight talking with no filter, and dour. He is an asshole.
I immediately related to him. Against his will, he
is made the head honcho in the war against rabies, entrusted to save Britain
from the encroaching epidemic. His assistant is a smart and crafty woman named
Penny, who he considers more worthy than her name, so he calls her Tuppence, a
moniker that sticks for the rest of the novel. They have a complicated
relationship that is aggravating and rewarding at the same time.
Despite the
cover and its back cover blurbs (“When you go down to the woods, pray that the
Mad Death is more than a snarl away”), this is much more of a thriller than a
horror story. The gory details and the infected humans are few, but the dire
circumstances and the well-formed characters keep the pages turning. After a
lull in the middle, I was back at it, frenziedly reading to get to the end,
which admittedly was weak. Intentionally. Because, as we have all learned from
our own pandemic, nothing ever really changes in this world.
This was
adapted for a BBC TV mini-series that aired the same year the book was
released. As it started filming in 1981, one wonders if the book, its source
material, was held back to coincide with the now well-remembered TV show
airing. At any rate, the Granada book has lovely cover illustration by John
Knights (credited on the back cover!) done in a medium I cannot readily identify.
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