Black Monday

by Bob Reiss and R. Scott Reiss

Book Overview

When the Pentagon taps Dr Gregory Gillette to be part of the Rapid Response Team assembled to kill the devastating Delta-3 bacteria, he soon discovers that his expertise is ignored. As the capital... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439109222
• ISBN13: 9781439109229
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Length: 420 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 4.2" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Something has invaded most of the world's gas supply....Planes fall out of the sky, food sits rottin

BLACK MONDAY by R. Scott Reiss is my latest nightmare-inducer. The premise of this tightly written, chilling work is fairly simple: something has invaded most of the world's gas supply, thus rendering a majority of internal combustion engines inoperative. Planes fall out of the sky, food sits rotting, people get hungry and the natives grow restless. Reiss doesn't dawdle on the road to chaos. Just like those first few raindrops in the middle of a picnic that herald the start of a deluge, he kicks things off with a couple of early warnings: planes mysteriously crash and cars suddenly stop running. There's a scene near the beginning of BLACK MONDAY that is a homage to "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" (arguably the best-known episode of "The Twilight Zone" television series) and sets things up for the disaster and horror that is to come. Gregory Gillette has the best chance of figuring out how and why the gasoline supply has become contaminated, and what to do about it. Gillette is an epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control; while his specialty is the study of disease microbes that attack human beings, it becomes evident to him that something similar is invading the world's oil supply. While nominally assigned to a rapid response team designated to identify --- and then find some way of destroying --- the deadly microbe that has been code-named Delta-3, Gillette learns he has been backbenched by the head of the team, a longtime nemesis who is letting hubris stand in the way of salvation. Gillette quickly realizes that he must either wait helplessly with his family while their neighborhood and city descend into chaos, along with the rest of the industrialized world, or come up with a way to neutralize and destroy the Delta-3 microbe before the damage to the world (and society) becomes completely irreparable. Disobeying orders and violating protocol, Gillette embarks on a dangerous and increasingly difficult mission across the country to find the source of the manufactured microbe that threatens to bring civilization crashing down in a matter of weeks. Even as the world is descending into chaos, however, a mysterious assassin is moving through the United States, making a series of apparently random yet carefully chosen killings that are somehow related to the biological attack on the world's oil supply --- and he is on a collision course with Gillette. Gillette is an interesting and engaging character, whose ordinariness balances nicely with his fortitude and uncanny ability to keep asking questions until he hits the right one --- even as he is subject to baser temptations. For his part, Reiss does a wonderful job of explaining the process by which oil makes its way from a hole in the ground to the pump on the corner. If BLACK MONDAY has a weak spot, it's Reiss's occasional subtle plea for development of alternative fuel sources. Whether it be oil, wind, sun or horses, any mechanism that attempts to distribute power equally over

Down & Dirty goes Clean & Hollywood!

Deinococcus radiodurans showed up in canned meat. It survived radition doses that had previously killed all microbes. This hardy fighter managed to stitch its genome together-actually repair itself- after radiation shredded the membrane of the cell. The science is there and well presented. The plot is sinister in that the antagonist players could be on the inside rather than breaking into the circle of security. The is the first half of the novel is an excellent rendition of the scenerio: OIL IS GOING....GOing...going...G o n e !!!!!!!!!!!! Then what happens to society? What happens to truth? When trying to get to the truth, It's not journalism any more. It's public relations. The finest minds turned into shills for incompetents. Soon they ask about the most about powerful narcotic in the world. OIL: More than opium, more than heroin. The pipelines are syringes. The addicts pay anything for their supply, kill for it. The first half of this novel is par excellance! Then it heads south to HOLLYWOOD!!! Still the first half is all ahead full speed. After that its a speed read till the last few pages where the author steps outside Hollywood and goes into the close!

Sociological Thrill

There's no lack of apocalyptic scenarios in literature and the arts these days, but maybe that's always been the case. What sets Black Monday apart for me is the masterful way in which the author chronicles the breakdown of a society without oil over a fifty-day period at the personal, community and governmental levels. Having been part of the Washington, DC scene for many years, I find this account unsettlingly accurate, inspiring as individuals summon untested personal resources in the face of an almost incomprehensible threat and disheartening as institutions remain true to dysfunctional form. Gillette's perseverance and ability to apply his epidemiological background to a bizarre and unfamiliar enemy as the life he loves is crumbling around him drives the story and captivated me.

Terrifying and made me think

Every once in a long while you read a novel that not only entertains and scares the pants off you, it makes you think. Fail Safe was that kind of novel for the nuclear age. Black Monday is that novel for the oil age. Imagine if one day, out of the blue, planes fell from the sky, cars stopped in their tracks, factories ground to a halt and police and fire protection stopped dead. Well, in Black Monday, an oil-destroying bacteria has gotten into the world's petroleum system, and suddenly nothing works. Author R. Scott Reiss gives the world a 50 day countdown before the collapse reaches the point of no return, but soon neighbors are fighting neighbors. Governments collapse. Armies disintegrate. The world, deprived of its daily fix of petroleum, goes into massive withdrawl. The author concentrates on one small street in Washington, and one family and group of friends trying to stay alive. At the same time one member of the group also works for the Pentagon's rapid response team, and is trying to track down the source of the deadly Delta-3 bacteria. The book kept me awake at night. It makes me see the world differently. It is based on real science. I'd like to give it a few more stars.

"It's a new kind of plague."

Dr. Gregory Gillette, a thirty-nine-year old epidemiologist, finds himself at the center of a maelstrom in R. Scott Reiss's apocalyptic novel, "Black Monday." Greg's job usually entails finding germs that cause disease outbreaks. Lately, he has been seconded from the Centers for Disease Control to the National Biological Warfare Defense Program, which helps plan responses to potential germ attacks. He and his wife of fourteen years, Marisa, live in a close-knit Washington, D. C. neighborhood with their two adopted children, Annie and Paolo. Suddenly, airplanes start to fall from the sky, cars and trucks become unaccountably disabled, and machines that use oil stop functioning. The cause of all this mayhem is an exotic, oil-eating microbe that has infected the fuel supply; the race is on to find a solution before society descends into chaos. Who is responsible for this scourge? Could it be the work of terrorists? There are far more questions than answers. No one knows the type of microbe that could do this much damage, how the microbe was introduced into the oil supply, or how it managed to survive the refining process. Before long, the world's leaders face an impossible situation. Without oil, how will people travel, heat their homes, and carry on the everyday tasks of living? At first, good citizens try to ration and cooperate with one another, but as conditions deteriorate, the worst of human nature comes to the fore: looting, riots, bloodshed, and even cannibalism. Greg Gillette is a dedicated doctor, loving husband and father, and highly respected member of his community, but he is also a maverick who disregards rules when they get in his way. His enemies are inept bureaucrats and hypocritical politicians who put their own interests ahead of the public's welfare. Greg is put to the test as he uses his keen intuition and analytical skills to find the source of the plague and its antidote before more lives are lost. "Black Monday" is an involving thriller with a timely theme. The author's use of the present tense provides an excitement and immediacy that rapidly propel the narrative forward. On the down side, the villains are a bit one-dimensional: a former beggar boy who becomes a killing machine at the behest of his shadowy mentor, and a cop turned sadistic thug who terrorizes Gillette's neighborhood. However, Reiss includes enough solid detail to make his improbable plot seem almost realistic. He handles his complicated scientific explanations with aplomb, takes the time to focus on a variety of compelling characters, and creates a terrifying scenario that will make readers think twice about the world's dependence on the ultimate narcotic--oil.