And Then You Die
A Novel
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4.2 • 28 Ratings
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
She expected sunshine and balmy breezes. What she saw was everyone's worst nightmare.
Bess Grady has heard the unmistakable sound before. She knows what it means. But not even the eerie lament of the howling dogs can prepare her for what has taken place in the small village. The seasoned photojournalist had been sent there on an easy assignment, and now she has stumbled upon something she was never meant to see. Amid chaos and fear, she joins forces with an intimidating stranger, a man whose alliances are unclear but whose methods have a way of leaving bodies in his wake. For what she has witnessed is only the first stage in a plan of terror that may kill us all. And she has no choice but to stop it—or die trying....
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An American photojournalist finds herself the unwitting pawn of a terrorist scheme in this workaday thriller from Johansen (Long After Midnight), which pits the CIA and the Centers for Disease Control against a nefarious mastermind with a talent for ingeniously disguised germ warfare. Caught in a Mexican village during a mysterious, deadly epidemic, Bess Grady miraculously survives and--after she runs afoul of the local authorities--finds an unlikely ally in a hit man with the alias "Kaldak." Johansen weaves tidbits from the last few years' headlines (the latest HIV research, the Ebola virus, Saddam Hussein, the Balkan war) into a suspenseful, if preposterous, plot full of murders, narrow escapes, chases and explosions. Unfortunately, she doesn't bother with local color. Mexico, New Orleans, Wyoming, Atlanta and North Carolina all look and sound more or less the same. Worse, Johansen never fleshes out her intriguing main characters, whose uninspired dialogue--"This is most unfortunate. It could cause complications"--and trite narrative--"Underneath that harsh exterior, he was very human after all"--undermine what might have been a page-turner. Major ad/promo.
