Book Review: Particles in the Air
Particles in the Air. Jenna Podjasek, Bancroft Press, January 24, 2023, Hardcover, eBook and Audiobook, 385 pages.
Reviewed by Robert Sancrainte.
Dr. Mallory Hayes is an infectious disease expert at the CDC. But no amount of experience with deadly microbes could have prepared her for a pathogen spreading in an already vulnerable population.
This medical thriller immediately thrusts the reader into the action, with a brief hook about a couple vacationing on a beach in San Diego. Suddenly, a tsunami hits, but it's a cliffhanger: the reader is immediately thrust backward in the story's timeline a little over a month, splitting chapters between a bioengineer in Sweden and Dr. Hayes working in her lab in Atlanta. There is a slow build as the reader wonders how these two doctors' lives will intersect. The Swedish scientist—Dr. Erik Lindgren—slowly unravels after his spousal abuse becomes public knowledge. Dr. Lindgren makes the surprising jump from domestic abuse to terrorism, but the plot moves along at a good clip, and the author, Dr. Jenna Podjasek, makes it clear that Lindgren's choices have their own inertia after he impulsively makes contact with an ISIS cell operating in Malmö.
After Lindgren is swiftly recruited by ISIS, there is some jarring incongruity in the First Act of the book between the fast-paced fever dream of Lindgren's crimes and the quotidian life and work of Dr. Mallory Hayes, the heroine of the novel. This disparity is alleviated by the surprise death of Lindgren at the end of the novel's First Act. The antagonist who defines the first third of the book—and is the subject of the bulk of it—is removed in a logical way, though without the foreshadowing that might have provided a more satisfying payoff for his dispatcher.
Once the human antagonist is gone, however, the story can finally focus on its true antagonist: a deadly viral mutation. The momentum builds behind Dr. Hayes and her team as the timeline catches up to the tsunami and the CDC is deployed to a FEMA camp near the coast of San Diego. Unbeknownst to anybody in the federal government, Lindgren's posthumous contribution to this natural disaster is a man-made viral contagion far more dangerous than a tsunami. The structural issues that led to the first third of the book is a kind of crime thriller in miniature now add a sense of foreboding context as the reader watches Dr. Hayes slowly realize that something novel is happening in the FEMA camp. The action isn't always tight in the Second Act, and many characters are introduced as potential adversaries, foils, or allies to Hayes, only to be sidelined, but the book stays anchored by placing believable strain on the characters as they at times deny or talk around both the logistical problems at the FEMA camp and Dr. Hayes' theory that there is a novel pathogen spreading.
Dr. Podjasek is clearly an expert on pathogens and the cascade of problems they create. The story becomes a mystery of sorts after Lindgren's death. Dr. Hayes wraps her expert mind around a well-paced series of revelations about the pathogen as she discovers its gruesome symptoms and swaps possible conclusions from the scientific data with her colleagues. There is a frictionless rapport between some of the characters, but the best moments of the sleuthing come when Hayes and her partner at the CDC engage in rapid-fire dialogue.
After the virus breaks FEMA containment, the reader is treated to multiple chapters from the perspectives of ancillary characters who came into contact with the virus. It's a great narrative device that is highly effective at communicating the speed and vectors of a spreading infection, as each side character briefly interacts with somebody who the reader already is aware has been infected. The scope and speed of the viral spread expertly illustrates what many of us learned during the COVID-19 pandemic—a novel virus can spread devastatingly fast.
The plot twist that stops the virus is smart and well-executed, although it emerges from the (literal) fires of an unearned about-face from a character that had lingered in the background for most of the novel. Nevertheless, Dr. Podjasek suffuses the Second and Third Acts of the story with well-measured insight into the ways in which viruses spread and become crises and the strategies that highly-trained medical professionals deploy to conduct investigations even as various government departments clash over bureaucratic priorities. Podjasek saves the best for last, exposing the final piece of the scientific puzzle that had been nicely hidden throughout the narrative. Dr. Hayes sits in quarantine after being infected, thoughts of her boyfriend's stalking behavior and of the work in the disaster area filling her head with visions and associations. What is the pattern? Why are some people exposed to the virus totally immune to its effects?
Dr. Podjasek has the mystery writer's gift of keeping the pieces of the mystery close to the chest and doling them out carefully. This works especially well in Particles in the Air because the central mystery hinges not only on expert knowledge of virology and immunology but also on a key piece of information about federal bureaucracy not widely known by the average reader (certainly not this reviewer). It was a genuinely clever flourish when the time came for the big reveal, and it felt both well-earned and grounded in reality.
I must say, though, that the big reveal and payoff of the novel are diminished by an unnecessary and unrealistic epilogue, one that doesn't address a lingering question regarding how a major character survived exposure to the deadly virus.
All in all, though, Particles in the Air is a competent and ambitious effort from Dr. Podjasek, and the novel overcomes its shortcomings to deliver a tense, satisfying climax. I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys medical thrillers and is interested in an exciting tale that tries earnestly to teach valuable lessons learned from the COVID crisis.