The National Post:

The year’s best mutated-protein thriller

By Frank Moher

August 1, 2009

Canada’s small publishers are not known for producing summer beach-reading material, but ECW Press has done a decent job of it with Tainted (subtitled A Doctor Zol Szabo Medical Mystery). It’s also not every day you come across a thriller featuring, as its central character, the associate medical officer of the Hamilton-Lakeshore Public Health Clinic. Talk about a Canadian action hero:  “I have a certificate, and I know how to use it.”

But author Ross Pennie, a physician and an infectious-disease specialist in Brantford, Ont., is at least as skilful with the plot twists and oh-nohow-are-they-gonna-get-out-of-this moments as he is, one supposes, with a case of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy. (You can expect a lot of that sort of talk in Tainted.) For a book about mutated proteins, this one’s a lot of fun.

It begins with a scenario familiar from the 2000 (not-at-all-fun) Walkerton E. coli tragedy and 2008 Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis outbreak. Autopsies on the brains of three Hamiltonians — a philanthropist’s trophy wife, a car salesman and a dentist — have revealed signs of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. That’s mad cow to you and me. But it isn’t just any CJD–it’s a variant that seems able to spread more rapidly than your ordinary CJD. The implications aren’t lost on Dr. Szabo: “[The case] would make last year’s countrywide panic over one Alberta steer with BSE look like five minutes of rain at a Sunday-school picnic,” he muses, in a fit of simile-making worthy of Sam Spade.

Before long, the number of dead has risen, and Dr. Szabo and associates must track down the source of the infection before news leaks to the public; otherwise, pandemonium will ensue. The suspects are plenty… {spoilers deleted}

Pennie does a nice job of providing his main character with the sort of backstory that gives a novel like this resonance. Dr. Szabo is a single parent, raising a son, Max, with a mild physical handicap. {spoilers deleted} [T]he scenes between father and son are authentic and affecting, and, like the rest of the book, written with a physician’s eye for the telling detail.

He also manages to squeeze in some acerbic criticism of our health system, as viewed from inside an epidemic. Administrators jockey for credit; politicians grab at quick answers. Tainted functions much of the time, by analogy, as a dissection of past Canadian crises. And sometimes its aim is direct. “Hunt down the prions, get this sorted, you’ll be a hero,” one of Szabo’s colleagues assures him. “You kidding?” he replies. “Even if I found the prions tomorrow, the press would say I dragged my feet and put lives at risk by masterminding a coverup. And whatever lobby groups got involved — cattle ranchers, meat packers, God knows who else — they’ll accuse me of reckless grandstanding, making wild suppositions without benefit of a meticulous investigation. “Like the MOH in Walkerton — he did a perfect job of handling their E. coli water tragedy and still got crushed in the stampede of a panicking public.’”

Eventually, of course, the mystery is solved and our hero allowed to return to his quiet life, but not before he and his love interest negotiate some last-minute peril. This is a thriller, after all (and the first in a self-proclaimed series of Dr. Zol Szabo mysteries, so I don’t think I’m giving too much away by telling you he survives). Meantime, the reader is given a crash course in the unexpectedly fascinating subject of epidemiology.

Perhaps this sort of deliciously morbid thriller is becoming our particular gift to the genre. First came Montreal’s Kathy Reichs and her books about a forensic anthropologist (which form the basis of the TV series Bones). Now comes Dr. Pennie and his insight into the world of exotic cooties. Canada may not have given the world a lot of action heroes. But we sure know how to give it the creeps.

The Globe and Mail:

Margaret Cannon’s bi-weekly guide to the hottest new crime fiction releases

June 27, 2009

We live in a remarkably safe spot in the world. Famine, war and pestilence happen somewhere else, far away. But danger can intrude even in Canada. It can be as near as the tap water we drink or the lettuce we eat. That’s the scary premise of Ross Pennie’s excellent debut novel, Tainted.

Zol Szabo is associate medical officer of health for Hamilton-Lakeshore. His egotistical and publicity-hungry boss is on the countdown for retirement, and Szabo expects to move up to chief medical officer.

When Hamish Wakefield, a specialist in infectious diseases, comes to him with a disturbing finding, Szabo takes it seriously. A cluster of people have died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad-cow disease. Wakefield’s evidence shows that the patients all died from the same form of the illness. That means there is a source in the community – or was, since CJD strikes years after infection.

The hunt for the source of this rare illness is the heart of Pennie’s novel. Zol and Hamish face the usual bureaucratic and political blockages, along with uniquely medical backstabbing. What works are the two likeable and convincing doctors and the scary plot. Pennie’s message – that no matter how safe our world seems, it’s still very fragile – is timely and true.

Publishers Weekly:

February 2, 2009

Canadian physician Pennie’s mystery debut introduces a winning protagonist, an Ontario public health doctor and former chef.

When Zol Szabo, a devoted single father to his disabled son, Max, gets word that his jurisdiction, which covers the province’s Niagara Escarpment, may be facing an outbreak of mad cow disease, Zol and his team must race to find the truth behind the mysterious deaths of three locals in order to avoid a public panic. Fans of the TV show House will find much of the plot familiar—the detailed medical detection that attempts to identify connections between the victims as well as the false or confusing leads in the hunt to locate a tainted food source.

The appealing supporting cast includes a gorgeous female PI. Pennie, an infectious-disease specialist, makes the medical jargon accessible, though he throws in a few melodramatic touches, such as his hero’s fear that Max may also fall victim to deadly prions.

Booklist:

Book reviews of the American Library Association

March 5, 2009

First in a new medical mystery series starring Canadian public-health doctor Zol Szabo, Pennie’s novel is a taut and timely work of suspense. After a variant of mad-cow disease is found in several recent autopsies, Zol has only a few days to track down the source of the contamination before a media storm breaks and sends the public into a panic. With the help of assistant epidemiologist Natasha, medical professor Hamish, and private investigator Colleen, Zol tracks back the germs.

Pennie builds tension perfectly, grabbing readers from the first page and keeping them entranced, both with the story itself and with nagging worries about the safety of the food they eat. All the characters, including such secondary figures as Natasha’s Indian mother, obsessed with finding her a husband, and Zol’s young son, Max, are realistically portrayed, their actions and emotions well matched with both their personalities and the plot.

Must reading for fans of Robin Cook and Peter Clement.

Winnipeg Free Press:

Timely, scary simulation of scientific detective work

By John Sullivan

May 10, 2009

As the world falls all over itself to respond to a threatened H1N1-flu pandemic, Ross Pennie’s Tainted (ECW Press, 240 pages, $25) is a timely, fascinating and scary simulation of the scientific detective work involved in an outbreak investigation.

Zol Szabo, associate chief medical officer of health for Hamilton-Lakeshore region, knows the three-case cluster of rapid-onset Creutzfeldt-Jakob (mad cow) disease that drops in his lap one bleak November night could be both a health nightmare and a career-ender.

Szabo and his small team (including a comely P.I.) scramble to find the disease source that links the deaths of a rich philanthropist’s wife, a car salesman and a dentist. But, as the caseload jumps to seven, the genie is soon out of the bottle and all public hell breaks loose.

Fearing that his young son may be infected but hampered by medical politicians, a grandstanding “star” investigator’s rush to (false) judgment, and a flurry of finger-pointing, Szabo frantically sifts a whatdunit haystack of possible contaminants from Swiss chocolate to British sausages to a new botox drug.

Eventually there’s murder too, but this resonant (if somewhat plodding) first novel stoutly eschews the potboiler epidemic of gratuitous sex, wild derring-do and cinematic hyperbole for stark realism.

Pennie, an infectious-disease specialist at Hamilton’s McMaster University, knows of what he speaks. And he makes clear that the scariest aspect of any new plague will almost certainly be the swirl of public, media and official panic that dogs and impedes efforts to cope with it.

London Free Press:

Stirred to Anxiety

By Joan Barfoot

April 18, 2009

One of the terrifically interesting things about some crime fiction is the way it can dunk readers into intriguing professions they know very little about.

So it is with Tainted, written by a Hamilton infectious disease specialist, about an investigation into the source of a fatal local outbreak of mad cow disease. Since presumably just about anyone can be stirred to anxiety about the many diseases and viruses, from mad cow to ebola, flinging themselves around a small world, Dr. Ross Pennie starts with a built-in advantage.

The McMaster University prof and lab director at Brantford General Hospital kicks off Tainted with a phone call to Zol Szabo, single father and associate medical officer of health for Hamilton-Lakeshore, advising that a local neuropathologist has found mad cow-variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the brains of three dead people.

Szabo and his colleagues are already dealing with an outbreak of flesh-eating disease at a local nursing home which, although it sounds more than serious in itself, promptly drops down the priority list.

Tainted then pursues the medical and scientific investigation into where the variant CJD might have originated, and thus how to stop it. Since it can lie dormant for a couple of decades, the scientists initially put their hopes on exposure to British beef in the bad old days of mad cow there.

But a couple of the dead, whose number rises to at least seven, were vegetarians and others had never been near the U.K., leaving the investigators looking elsewhere.The regional medical officer of health, whose job Szabo covets and fears not getting, doesn’t wait long to call in the blustering big public health guns from Toronto, even though they’d earlier created a crisis by misdiagnosing a malaria case as Lassa fever.

This is where the novel gets alarming for a reader. Learning, from an author involved in the field, how office politics, academic investments, and personal ambitions may affect responses to disease outbreaks, is disheartening at best. So is the resistance, taken for granted as a virtue in Tainted, to giving the media, and so the public, any hint that something dangerous is going on.Then naturally, when a badly investigated culprit is wrongly announced, local and international panic ensues, before Szabo and his friends and colleagues, at considerable trauma and physical risk, reach the correct conclusion.

While somewhat stodgily written, Tainted has a quick-paced plot, with the requisite personal-life developments ticking alongside the science.

It’s in the intersecting pursuits of university research, hospital treatment and public health unit responsibilities, though, that the real interest lies for outsiders — who might reasonably hope that the professionals are working swiftly and collegially to protect us, while fearing that sometimes, distracted from the point, they might not be.

Hamilton Spectator:

Canadian Mysteries

Reviewed by Don Graves

April 4, 2009

Tainted is an outstanding mystery/medical thriller. Author and MD Ross Pennie hits all the high points: tension, absorbing descriptions of places (in Hamilton) that become an integral part of the action, tight pacing, and dialogue that is page-turning, thrusting the reader squarely into the core of the crisis.

To be successful, a medical thriller must feel real, and involve something that could actually happen to you. Tainted delves into political expediency, blind ambition, emotional trauma and resolution and it all feels very real.

Seven bodies in a morgue, dead from mad-cow prions having destroyed their brains. An actress, teacher, doctor, car-salesman — all innocent people struck down by a possible epidemic, a tragedy that might also consume the young son of the investigating medical officer of health, Dr. Szabo. Lip-biting

suspense, edgy and frightening plot combine with rare insight into characters driven by greed, fear and passion produce what is sure to become a bestseller.

Pennie is a bright new addition to the Canadian mystery writing scene and another in a growing list of new, top-drawer, local mystery writers. Tainted is a must read for 2009. Best yet, it’s the first in a series.

Ancaster News:

Debra Downey, Senior Editor

April 15, 2009

The best thing about Ancaster resident Ross Pennie’s first medical thriller is the news there’s two more novels in the works.

Recognizing Dr. Pennie’s talent for spinning an intriguing, page-turning tale, ECW Press has already signed on to continue the story of public health doctor Zol Szabo and other masterfully created characters who deal with frighteningly real epidemics.

A practicing physician and infectious-disease specialist, it’s no surprise Dr. Pennie is intimately familiar with the chilling aspects of an epidemic. In fact, the idea for Tainted is rooted in his own real life drama.

With his writing talents honed over decades of practice and the medical knowledge of insider, Dr. Pennie hits his stride with Tainted.

Set in an affluent area along the Niagara Escarpment, the city in which main character Dr. Szabo works looks and feels like most small urban centers. But the calm community is turned upside down when residents begin to die from what appears to be mad cow disease. Dr. Szabo and a young infectious diseases specialist must trace the source of the deadly food-borne illness that seems to have contaminated almost everything on supermarket shelves. The pair hope to avoid a maelstrom of panic and find a quick solution. But while the clock is ticking, the investigation becomes hampered by political expediency, greed, ambition and fear.

As a member of the medical establishment, readers would expect a realistic tale from Dr. Pennie. What’s surprising is the manner in which he beckons mystery lovers to sit down beside his protagonist and experience the frustration and terror of the crisis firsthand.

Dr. Pennie’s descriptions are vivid. Take for example these comforting few hours at home before Dr. Szabo’s world takes a turn for the worse.

“He sipped his scotch and nestled his lanky frame deeper into the buttery leather of his recliner. A north wind…rattled the living-room windows. Zol stroked the furry spine of Cory, the ginger cat who hunkered into his lap. They both gazed at the blue flames licking the simulated logs in the fireplace.”

As the high-stakes tension evolves:

“Restless energy seeped from Zol’s pores all afternoon. He dialled Hamish’s number half a dozen times but was always greeted by the stilted voice of the answering machine. He paced the carpet…almost counted the seconds.”

Two more Dr. Zol Szabo medical mysteries are scheduled for 2010 and 2011. The next novel takes place in a Hamilton retirement residence where seniors are dying of unexplained food poisoning.

Mystery Scene Magazine:

A review by Beverly DeWeese

Spring 2009, Issue #109

When Dr. Zol Szabo, the medical health officer at Hamilton-Lakeshore, hears the results of seven brain autopsies, he’s scared. Each of the brains shows a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD or mad cow). That’s a huge number of cases for the province of Ontario, and what’s more, it’s a variant of CJD that no one has even heard of. What is it and why has it just appeared?

This scary thriller is for readers who love medical puzzles. Author Pennie, a Canadian doctor, has made the science detection clear and interesting, while showing how certain situations, such as tainted meat or another disease, can trigger CJD. However, in this case, two of the CJD cases are vegetarians, only adding to Dr. Szabo’s difficulty in tracking down the disease’s triggers.

Though not terribly complex characters, Dr. Szabo and his colleague Dr. Wakefield are likeable protagonists who must unravel the disease before it becomes an epidemic. Szabo’s son, who may have inadvertently been exposed to the disease by his father, an attractive PI and love interest, a lab worker colleague, and a crazed mink farmer also add to the human interest. It’s really Pennie’s skillfully developed plot, the absolutely fascinating medical lore, and cogent observations on the politics of public health that made Tainted a page-turner for me.