12-21

The end of the world is nigh, maybe, with a new variant of insomnia sweeping across the United States that may or may not be linked to an ancient Mayan prediction of the apocalypse. Scientist Gabriel Stanton and antiquities expert Chel Manu are locked in a desperate struggle to untangle myth from scientific fact in order to find a cure and time is running out fast.

The latest book from Dustin Thomason, one of the authors of mega seller ‘The Rule of Four’ belongs firmly in the category marked ‘pulp’. His description of how VFI spreads first to the citizens of LA, then the wider US and finally to the whole world is, as might be expected from a writer with an MD from Columbia, chillingly realistic, as is the speed with which he shows civilization falling apart as a result.

Some readers may find it a bit of a leap to engage with the elements of the plot relating to the ‘Mayan Apocalypse’, which hasn’t, so far, caught hold of the public imagination in the way the Millennium Bug did. Although here again Thomason provides a plausible explanation that has more to do with people living in grinding poverty looting their heritage to survive than vague intimations of the end of days.

However large a pinch of salt you take with your literary predictions of impending doom there is no escaping the fact that this is a highly competent thriller. The plot engages from first page to last and Thomason provides his characters with back-stories that make their plight more affecting.

If we’re all still here come Christmas, and we probably will be, 12-21 could be a modest hit, with a little judicious re-jigging it could be made into an equally successful film too.