The Pandemic Has Begun!

THE PANDEMIC HAS BEGUN!

Index Case is a pre-apocalyptic medical thriller that we can only hope remains purely fictional, but this latest offering from Sam Dawson is based on thorough research and the insight only a professional journalist can bring. Accompanied by Sam's own illustrations and a chilling cover by Greg Chapman, this is one book you're not going to want to miss out on. Catch the virus now as an ebook or in print.

Index case, in public health, the first case of a disease or other condition that is noticed by health authorities. The index case is sometimes also referred to by the term patient zero. - Encyclopaedia Britannica

INDEX CASE isn't just another novel about a pandemic. It's a pandemic in itself! A thoroughly-researched medical thriller, a critical analysis of public policy, a survival handbook, a guidebook to some of the historical highlights along the south coast of England, and ultimately a philosophical treatise. All of this wrapped up for the intrepid reader in one gripping novel.

Rob is an epidemiologist, dedicated to fighting disease and all too aware that the UK is unprepared for the deadly pandemic that's about to hit. As he plans how his family will survive, he ponders the traces of long-dead villages and plagues past, and begins to wonder: is it time to be part of the problem, not the solution?

Index Case holds a Black Mirror up to recent times, with dashes of Quatermass, Wyndham, Simon Clark, Christopher and Doctor Who – all the good stuff! Thought-provoking, with lots of cultural touchstones I could relate to.

— Paul Kane, award-winning, #1 bestselling author of Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell and Dark Reflections

Laced with nuanced social observation and eerie visions of horror, Dawson’s Index Case is a paranoiac fever dream for which there’s mercifully no cure!
— Dave Jeffery, Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award nominated author of the a Quiet APOCALYPSE series

How the Pandemic Started with Sam Dawson

We asked Sam Dawson, author of the forthcoming medical thriller, INDEX CASE, what inspired him to write a novel about a pandemic. Here's what he told us...

Back in 2000 I was on a study weekend with a number of people who had worked or volunteered in Civil Defence and the Royal Observer Corps, back when nuclear war was the threat that transfixed mankind. Several were now involved in disaster planning, and they were reminiscing about the old days. "You know what scares the life out of me now?" one asked. "Avian flu".

Several years later I was on a similar expedition, with similar people. Only now they were coming out of retirement as the British government realised too late that it had thrown away almost all of its priceless Cold War protected infrastructure - everything from the public warning network to the fleets of Green Goddess fire engines and countless bunkers. It was a post-9/11 world where it had been noticed that the perpetrators of those attacks had also explored driving tankers of chemicals to reservoirs and sought licences to fly crop-dusting planes. Suddenly, under the name 'Resilience', emergency planning exercises were being shoehorned into exposed council offices to run simulations on how, with no personnel beyond the over-stretched emergency services and a few civil servants, the threats of flooding, climate change, terrorism and dirty bombs could be handled. Too late and too little, money was being spent. Quietly, every fire service local area received a hazmat vehicle capable of dealing with the results of nuclear, biological and chemical incidents.

The emergency planners were talking again. They all agreed on one thing: that despite all that had happened in recent years, the threat that they saw as certain to materialise, sooner or later - the one that literally kept them awake at night - was bird flu.

That was when I began to write INDEX CASE.

Sam Dawson 
https://www.sam-dawson.co.uk/books/

Index Case by Sam Dawson

Announcing a new novel! 

Black Beacon Books is thrilled to announce that we'll be publishing the latest novel by British author Sam Dawson in September. This medical thriller is a virus you definitely do want to catch! 

 

Rob is an epidemiologist, dedicated to fighting disease and all too aware that  the UK is unprepared for the deadly pandemic that's about to hit. As he plans how his family will survive, he ponders the traces of  long-dead villages and plagues past, and begins to wonder: is it time to be part of the problem, not the solution?

Cover art by the wonderful Greg Chapman

Illustrations by Sam Dawson

INDEX CASE  by Sam Dawson isn't just another novel - it's a pandemic in itself. A thoroughly-researched medical thriller, a critical analysis of public policy, a survival handbook, a guidebook to some of the historical highlights along the south coast of England, and ultimately a philosophical treatise. All of this wrapped up for the intrepid reader in one gripping novel with Rob, an epidemiologist, preparing his family for the deadly pandemic that's about to hit.