Resistance
A Graphic Novel
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
A gritty, dark tale of infectious disease gone wrong - the timely graphic novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Val McDermid, stunningly illustrated by Kathryn Briggs
'A brilliant and timely story, told with McDermid's verve, style and passion. I couldn't stop turning the pages, even when I could barely take the tension. Wonderful.' Denise Mina
It's the summer solstice weekend, and 150,000 people descend on a farm in the northeast of England for an open-air music festival. At first, a spot of rain seems to be the only thing dampening the fun - until a mystery bug appears. Before long, the illness is spreading at an electrifying speed and seems resistant to all antibiotics. Can journalist Zoe Meadows track the outbreak to its source, and will a cure be found before the disease becomes a pandemic?
A heart-racing thriller, Resistance imagines a nightmare pandemic that seems only too credible in the wake of COVID-19. Number one bestseller and queen of crime Val McDermid has teamed up with illustrator Kathryn Briggs to create a masterful graphic novel.
'One of today's most accomplished crime writers' Literary Review
'A powerful, unique look at the benign origins of catastrophe' Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scottish crime writer McDermid (the Tony Hill series) takes a stab at bio-noir in this spare but riveting graphic novel tracking a pandemic. Zoe, a dreadlocked freelance journalist, foreshadows "this was where the end began" from ground zero: A Northumberland music festival where tainted sausages may spell humanity's demise. Zoe tracks the bacterium from infected rock stars to the wider world "like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond" while trying to ignore the possibility that a friend may have been the cause. A less-developed secondary plot tracks Dr. Siddiqui, an infectious disease researcher muzzled by an arrogant, clueless bureaucracy, who provides Zoe with a handy "idiot's guide" to how greedy pharmaceutical companies and antibiotic-stuffed animals helped create a killer plague. McDermid rockets the catastrophe along as the mutating and species-jumping bacterium overwhelms a phlegmatic medical response. Briggs's grungy and off-kilter figures visually counterpoint the clinical plot, while her ashy charcoal backgrounds and faux-medieval frames suggest a cyclical human drama. Though missing the gravitas of recent disaster disease fiction like Lawrence Wright's The End of October, this chilling story may prove oddly comforting for Covid-era readers—it's a glimpse of a far worse potential future.
