Bloodborne: Book Review

Bloodborne, by Gregg Luke

When this arrived in the mail my wife promptly stole it. So she read it first and loved it. When I got to it (my TBR pile is vast...vast) she actually asked me why it took me so long.

I read it over two nights.

I made myself take two nights.

Billed as a medical thriller, Bloodborne moves at an incredible pace, it is a thriller after all and Luke has written quite the page turner.
Medical thriller makes me think of hospitals, but this is also an adventure story. Our protagonist Dr. Erin Cross is minding her own business when someone tries to kill her during a lunch break at the corner deli. Timely intervention from former Spec Ops agent Sean Flannery saves the day, but when assassins keep coming after Erin she needs Flannery's help yet again.

Now what makes this a medical thriller is that Erin isn't just a local Dr. but virologist who has been at the forefront of things like H1N1 and we come to find out that an old associate of hers is trying to bring his own brand of Armageddon to the world. He also wants her dead to cover his tracks in the process.

What I liked:
Luke has some great characterizations and dialogue. The tension is gripping and above all Luke knows his stuff about setting and especially the diseases themselves. He is a pharmacist and studied the H1N1 pandemic in the Yucatan in 2009.
He injects a bit of real life humor into the tale, even having a character giving the alias of Dan Brown, "not the writer, he says". This is funny because Dan Brown's thrillers are about the closest thing I could say Bloodborne reads like. The whole conspiracy goes beyond just a lone nut and is involved with Skull & Bone like Illuminati groups, even to the point of different sects who are opposed to one another. Thats all good.

What I didn't like:
I'm not particularly a fan of Dan Brown and while I loves me a good conspiracy some of the characters behaviors seemed a little unbelievable. Perhaps there was a reasonable answer for this-along with some surprises with the main characters toward the end-but earlier in the book with some of the henchmen I was like, 'Why would they do that?' really?
Things wrapped up neatly while at the same time, I think it would be fair to say it is wide open for a possible sequel.

Regardless, there is no denying Luke's powers of making you turn pages.