Author : Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan Publisher : Harper Collins Cost : Indian Rupees
250
September 24, 2010. Regis Air Flight 753 lands at New York’s JFK Airport with 210 people on board, all apparently dead. There are no traces of panic, violence or poisoning, and the authorities call in Ephriam Goodweather, who’s recently divorced, a recovering alcoholic, and an investigator of biological threats. He’s joined by Nora Martinez, his annoyingly sexy fellow biochemist. A kayak, a set of golf clubs, and a coffin with strange carvings spill out of the cargo hold. At the morgues, postmortems reveal slender lacerations on the necks of the deceased.
If you haven’t guessed it yet, this is indeed a reject TV pitch (which FOX threw out a few years back), though Hollywood director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy), along with writer Chuck Hogan, decided there was a trilogy of novels waiting to be spun out of the junked material. Unfortunately, every bit in here reeks of clichés that you’d rather pass up, unless, of course the tagline grabs you as irresistible: “In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country. In two months – the world.”
Back to the plot, the medics notice unnatural changes in the corpses, like the blood turning a festering white, while the coffin gets tossed into an unsecured backyard. Most surprisingly, the team then decides to turn in for the night. The next morning, a total solar eclipse blankets the city, as Abraham Setrakian, a survivor from the Nazi camp of Treblinka in Poland, wakes up to flashbacks of his grandma’s horrific bedtime fables. He smells vampires. As first-time writer, del Toro is intent on rubbishing the certain slick Twilight image of vampires in this, the first part of his own trilogy. There is a definite creepy factor in here, but how far he can stretch this is anybody’s guess. For one thing, stay away if the thought of rats seems too offensive. The big help for our sleuths turns up in the form of Vasily Fet, New York’s finest pest control officer. Jaideep Sen
Source : Time Out Delhi ISSUE 11 Friday, August 20, 2010
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