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Doctor Janeway's Plague (2000)

First time novelist John Farrell has written a good scary thriller that combines equal parts of Brent Monahan's Book of Common Dread and George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, as a small group of amateur detectives' independent investigations all focus on the Reverend Doctor Robert H. Janeway, a Harvard Divinity School professor who seems to have survived into the present from Colonial times, and the strange goings-on in and around Harvard's Widener Library.

Miriam Tailor's research on her own family has convinced her that Janeway is an ancestor who is supposed to have died four hundred years ago. Leon Bradley is a retiring professor determined to figure out how his friend, Father Burton, could possibly have been decomposing before he died. While Glen DiStasio and Irwin Strathmond are astronomers, curious about the odd behavior of a star in the Monoceros system. All these storylines eventually converge around Janeway.

Farrell keeps his story moving at a brisk pace and provides some genuinely frightening moments. Some of the physics used to explain Janeway's longevity seemed awfully sketchy to me, but if you get caught up in the tension of the tale it's not too hard to suspend your disbelief. This is a fine first effort that holds out the promise of better books to come.

(Reviewed:15-Jul-01)

Grade: (B-)

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Doctor Janeway's Plague (2000)

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