The Strain

Starred review from April 13, 2009
Director Del Toro (who won an Oscar for Pan's Labyrinth
) makes a dramatic splash in his fiction debut, the first volume in a vampires vs. humanity trilogy, coauthored with Hogan (Prince of Thieves
). Just as a jumbo jet on a flight from Germany to New York is touching down at JFK, something goes terribly wrong. When Ephraim Goodweather, of the Centers for Disease Control, investigates the darkened plane, he finds all but four passengers and crew dead, drained of blood. Despite Goodweather's efforts to keep the survivors segregated, they get discharged into the general population. Soon after, the corpses of the tragedy's victims disappear. The epidemiologist begins to credit the wild stories of Abraham Setrakian, an elderly pawnbroker who's the book's Van Helsing figure, and concludes that a master vampire has arrived in the U.S. The authors maintain the suspense and tension throughout in a tour de force reminiscent of Whitley Strieber's early work.

August 31, 2009
An ancient vampire is brought into New York by an immortality-seeking financier and infests the city with bloodthirsty, light-shunning revenants. Can two doctors, an elderly folklore professor, an exterminator and a gang member stem the monstrous tide? The delightfully rumbling voice of Ron Perlman, who has appeared in several of Del Toro's films, does the honors. The listener may quibble with his inconsistent pronunciation of the character name “Ephraim,” but on the whole, Perlman's narration and dialogue are creditable, particularly his convincing, Eastern European–accented portrayal of Professor Setrakian. Del Toro and Hogan favor a discursive style, and their lengthy descriptions and the repetitive nature of many of the vampire attacks mean that the story is somewhat slow to gather steam, but it does get there in the end. A Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 13).

Can anything new be done with vampires? Yes. Writer/director Guillermo Del Toro (PAN'S LABYRINTH) teams up with his HELLBOY buddy, Ron Perlman, for a new take on an old legend. (Writer Chuck Hogan co-authored the novel.) Ron Perlman calmly relates the story of a vampire attack on New York City, which starts with a planeload of neck-biters from Germany. Perlman is at his best with the dialogue of the main characters, a CDC investigator and a savvy Holocaust survivor who knows how to handle the undead. Perlman pauses at unusual spots and fails to take a breath to let listeners catch up when the setting changes, but, overall, his delivery is powerful. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

May 15, 2009
Pan's Labyrinth director Del Toro and thriller author Hogan ("Prince of Thieves") team up to launch the first volume of a modern-day vampire trilogy. The story begins onboard a grounded plane that has just landed at New York's JFK airport. Police and emergency medical crews are called to investigate the possible outbreak of a mysterious disease, which has killed all but four of the plane's passengers. Unknowingly, something more ominous is responsible for the carnage, which now threatens the city and soon the entire country. Unlike the sexy bloodsuckers of paranormal romances and the cuddly vampires of teen fiction, these undead creatures are slick, dark, and frightening. This novel reads like a story made for the big screen, and with writer/director Del Toro, that is entirely possible. Despite the somewhat slow start, the story builds up steam quickly, and fans of horror, vampire fiction, and Del Toro's "Hellboy" films will line up for this one. Buy multiple copies. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 2/15/09; Rayo will publish the simultaneous Spanish-language edition.Ed.]Carolann Lee Curry, Mercer Univ. Medical Lib., Macon, GA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2009
Film director del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, 2006, etc.) and thriller writer Hogan (The Killing Moon, 2007, etc.) treat a vampire outbreak as a massive public-health crisis, with chilling results.

When a plane arriving from Berlin goes completely black on the runway at JFK, losing all electrical power and contact with the outside world, authorities expect to find a tense hostage situation on board. Instead, they discover that almost everyone on the plane has mysteriously died, presumably during the very brief interval between the time it landed and the moment a SWAT team stormed the cabin. Suspecting a disease of some kind and fearing its spread, authorities call in Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, head of a CDC team set up to deal with just this sort of fast-moving, potentially catastrophic epidemic. What Dr. Goodweather and his team gradually discover, however, is something much stranger and potentially even more dangerous: a species of parasitic worm that gradually turns its host into a bloodthirsty something that very closely resembles a vampire. Soon they are operating well outside the realm of established science, especially after they team up with Abraham Setrakian, a Holocaust survivor and former academic who now operates a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem and has dealt with this sort of thing before. Armed with Setrakian's knowledge and an extensive arsenal of anti-vampire weaponry, the CDC team sets out to control the outbreak by attacking its source. The book boasts a plethora of arresting images and many terrific macabre touches. Del Toro and Hogan also succeed in constructing a driving plot and delivering a gripping conclusion.

Great characters, a semi-plausible premise and a flair for striking scenes get this trilogy off to a first-rate start.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)