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With VIRALS, Kathy Reichs heads into the unfamiliar territory of young adult fiction, using the great-niece of forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan as her main character. Tory is a feisty teenager still coming to grips with living on a secluded island off Charleston in South Carolina with the father she barely knows following her mother's death. Like her famous relative, Tory is fascinated by what likes below the surface of things and when her and a group of friends finds a set of dog-tags, she is determined to find out who they belonged to, even if it involves breaking into one of the research laboratories on the island to use specialised cleaning equipment to removed the accumulated grime and discover the name of the soldier they once belonged to. On their way out, Tory finds a sick puppy, one of the hybrid wolf-dogs who live on one of the islands. The puppy appears to have been subjected to experiments and is clearly going to be put down. Tory and her friends rescue the animal and are determined to nurse it back to health, hiding it in a deserted bunker on the island. Matters become even more complicated by the discovery of a woman's body in a shallow grave, a bullet hole in her skull a large clue to the fact that she didn't die a natural death. Soon Tory and her friends find themselves in ever-escalating danger and it starts to become clear that something strange is happening to them, something that is almost certainly connected with the experiments on the wolf-dog puppy. VIRALS is a strange fusion of mystery and fantasy and in a way, I wish Reichs had not opted for spinning what is clearly the start of a new series out of her already-established world, thus combining science and fantasy in a way that I failed to find wholly convincing. I think the central premise would have worked better as a standalone series. Tory and her friends were strong enough characters in their own right not to need the surname of Brennan as a hook to catch the reader with. I felt the fantasy elements, whilst an integral part of the story, were a somewhat uneasy fit. But the characters were engaging, even though the style of narration in which Tory addresses herself direct to the reader seems a little forced at times, as though Reichs was trying rather too hard to pull off the persona of a 14-year-old girl. In spite of that, VIRALS was an entertaining read and I'll be interested to see what happens to Tory and her companions in future books. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, May 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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