‘They said that twenty-five percent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eight percent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren’t good.’A CITY IN QUARANTINE London, the epicenter of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already … already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed.A MURDERED CHILD At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified.A POWERFUL CONSPIRACY D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the Met, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first – the virus or the killers?Written over fifteen years ago, this prescient, suspenseful thriller is set against a backdrop of a capital city in quarantine, and explores human experience in the grip of a killer virus.
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This plot line was full of promise, especially given that it reflected so much of the current lockdown pandemic situation, but sadly it lacked suspense & in my opinion fell flat. Despite the colourful characters & opportunity for the author to build on them, I felt that their relationships were forced & shallow. I’m a huge fan of Peter May’s crime fiction novels & think that he should perhaps stick to the tried and tested format that works so well in those.
What if the pandemic we have all been experiencing in the past year had been written about fifteen years ago? In 2005, Peter May could not find a publisher for his book “Lockdown;” it was just too unrealistic. Fast forward to 2020, and suddenly it mirrors the daily headlines and hourly newscasts.
Detective Jack MacNeil lives in London the midst of a epidemic lockdown. The world is under siege by an invisible enemy, a deadly virus of alleged Chinese origin. It starts like any other flu, with body aches, fever, sore throat, a cough, and then degenerates quickly into progressive and irreversible respiratory decline, killing quietly, and spreading swiftly while residents await an effective vaccine. The infection is easily spread, and certain areas are simply off-limits. It is an airborne virus so everyone wears masks, and no one shakes hands.
Against this background, May created a complicated and persuasive crime drama. The bones of a murdered child are uncovered on a building site where workmen are feverishly constructing an emergency hospital. Jack struggles; the virus strikes his own family, and he, along with forensics’ specialist Amy, work frantically to discover the identity of the child and to determine who viciously murdered her. However, tests on the girl’s bones uncover something that changes the entire direction of the search. There is someone will do anything necessary to stop this investigation, and even the “bad guy” is confidently hiding in plain sight, secure in the anonymity afforded him by the mask, goggles, and coveralls. (But he likes the cat.)
“Lockdown” touches on things the world has endured since March 2020 and combines it with a crime for a complex and compelling story. It is a fifteen year-old book with unnerving reality. What secrets does our current pandemic hide and what are the implications for the future? I guess I will have to read all of Peter May’s books more carefully in the future.
#Lockdown #PeterMay #pandemic
I want to order it..written years ago and now available.
Recently I broke a promise I had made to myself. As we all faced self-confinement because of the pandemic, I foresaw a glut of novels, mainly thrillers, crime, and maybe some romance, set in the boxed-in world we were living, or in some dystopian outcome post-virus. I’d seen numerous authors announcing on social media that their ‘pandemic/coronavirus/COVID-19’ novel was on its way. I also saw the top-sellers’ lists populated by previously published works in this vein. I resolved I was not going to read anything set in these pandemic days. I’d lived through it, and any writer’s take would pale in the light of what was happening worldwide.
Then, something caught my eye.
Some fifteen years ago, a Scottish author, Peter May, wrote a crime thriller called ‘Lockdown’. It was set in London during a pandemic, though not COVID-19, and involved a Detective Inspector investigating a gruesome murder after a body was discovered on a site being prepared for victims of the virus. Something, the originality of the idea as summarized in the blurb, other reader reviews lauding the author’s precognitive prowess; something, though I’m still not quite sure what it was, had me buying the novel and jumping it to the start of my reading list on the Kindle.
If I were given to writing shorter reviews, I could easily sum this one up in two words: ‘Terrifyingly intense!’
Author May’s tale had me hooked from the start and preparing for an all-nighter. The backcloth, essentially a London under siege, was very convincingly portrayed, especially in the quickly overlooked sensory details that led so much authenticity to the setting. The characters were credible and fully formed. From the protagonist detective in his last few hours of work as a police officer, through the forensic specialist who wove her special scientific magic to help identify the victim, to Pinkie, a glorious villain whose deadly skills create tension in every scene where he appears. Together with a cast of secondary characters, solid in their roles, built from reality, all made this easily one of the most disquieting novels I have read in a long time. From where we all are in real life, to the tale so expertly crafted by author May, it was just a few staggering steps – and once again, as a testament to the writer’s skill both in his research and its subsequent presentation in this nail-biting tale, ‘Lockdown’ was penned fifteen years ago!
Bravo, sir!
I highly recommend this crime thriller.
I don’t even know where to start with this book. It’s all kinds of crazy. Crazy in crazy. And crazy in how uncanny it is.
A little backstory here… The author wrote this book over 15 years ago and never published it. For whatever reason, it was released this month. In the middle of a worldwide pandemic. In the middle of half of the world being in a stay at home order and wearing masks. Why is this so important?…
This isn’t something I usually do, but I am going to lightly set the book up for you…
There’s a killer flu. Like a super killer flu. The death rate is around 50%. London isn’t in a stay at home order, but a military lockdown. No one is allowed to travel through the city without permission. People have literally locked themselves in their homes. Not one business is open. Looters have ravaged the city. And cue in a child killer…
I still don’t know if it was a smart idea to read this book right now, but nonetheless, I did. I think the scariest part of the book is the thought of what could be if governments decided to hold too much power over us in our current times. This idea really had my blood pumping and heart racing.
This book is so well-written, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s full of twists and excitement that had me turning the pages. I had connected some dots, but the real mystery was revealed early. Some might balk at that, but it was for a reason. Everything that happened after that was like a racing countdown. The hunt was on.
I highly recommend this book for all the thriller and suspense readers. However, depending on where your head is right now, I might hold off. It was a bit difficult to separate real life and the book given the current crisis the world is experiencing. It’s definitely a book to download.