What incredible timing…the news today is full of the coronavirus (COVID-19) which allegedly originated with animals and came from Asia and everywhere I look, people are wearing masks, more or less freaking out, and are generally TENSE as we see the initial outbreak begin to expand, revealing how completely unprepared we are in this country to fight a pandemic. And, voila! I get to spend the weekend reading The Red Lotus, Chris Bohjalian’s latest, which happens to involve a horrible pathogen from Asia, spread by rats. Good times!
The story initially seems to be a straightforward mysterious disappearance. When emergency room physician Alexis Remnick’s boyfriend Austin Harper invites her to go on a bike tour vacation to Vietnam, it seems like a great time…until Austin disappears on a solo ride. Ostensibly, his reason for this trip is so Austin can show Alexis his passion for cycling while at the same time paying his respects to the place “…near where his father had been wounded and his uncle had died in what the Americans called the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese called the American War.”
Alexis struggles to understand it all, both the puzzling loss of the man she was just beginning to realize she loved, and the bizarre facts she learns from the FBI, who tell her that the things Austin had told her were basically all lies. Add to that Austin’s not-too-friendly parents, and the weird actions of some of her colleagues at the hospital where both Alexis and Austin worked, and it all gets very weird very fast. Alexis tries to uncover the truth about where Austin was going when he vanished, the real reason he brought her to Vietnam, and how much danger she is really in.
The story shifts perspective between one of the bad guys (not clear at first who it is) and the various characters involved in trying to unravel the truth before things all turn to hell. It seems people have been “…injecting their plague-resistant gene into the rats who ruled the subways…” and are looking to sell this newly developed biological weapon to any rogue country who is willing to pay.
It’s terrifying, entirely believable, and extremely well written. I’m not sure what several early reviewers were talking about when they said it was a slow burn…I couldn’t put it down. Thank you Doubleday and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for this honest review – Five stars.