The invisible killer. We’ve all seen the media frenzy over the latest deadly outbreaks: SARs, Avian flu…. We’ve all been gripped with fear as they sensationalize the story, only to have it disappear soon after; leaving us to wonder if this was just another scare story. Yet history is riddled with stories of deadly plagues and killer viruses ravaging populations and wiping out civilizations. What makes us think that it could not happen again?

Sam North’s latest novel is not a work of Science Fiction. It’s not even a work of fiction. It is potential fact!

Set in Vancouver, this is the tale of a world ravaged by a mutated version of the avian flu virus. People are dropping dead in the thousands, society has broken down and anarchy is slowly ensuing. In the midst of all this turmoil are three sets of characters, Fen and her dog Red who, along with her family, flee to a remote island in an attempt to wait out the epidemic. Arno flies from Toronto to Vancouver to find Rachel, the woman he loves, and together they try to outrun the virus. Finally there’s Deka, a cab driver whose good friend Dr Borov somehow helps them both to survive the virus with his own medicinal cocktail. The so-called experts have failed to develop an effective vaccine and now most of these experts are also dead. People are afraid of people. No-one knows who to trust. The government are no longer able to protect you. The economy is all but destroyed. The world seems doomed.

Yet out of the ashes emerge these three sets of characters who prove that all is not lost. When all is said and done it’s the ordinary people who save the day. Through all the doom and seeming despair, hope remains alive with some. When you’ve hit rock bottom and survived, the only way is up.

What makes this book so much more compelling is Sam’s easygoing and free-flowing style of writing. Rarely have I discovered a new author who can draw you into his world so easily. His writing is alive and engaging, and the dialogue is so down to earth that you feel like the people are next to you acting it out. Sam has the enviable ability to create a diverse group of characters that the reader is able to vividly picture and instantly like or dislike; something that should be commonplace, but is sadly lacking in many of today’s books.

Fascinating, frightening and compelling, Another Place to Die is the ultimate page-turner which I guarantee will result in many late nights under the bedside light with you uttering, ‘just one more chapter!!’

Reviewed by Ian Middleton: Travel Writer and photographer, and author of Mysterious World: Ireland.

Sam North's Another Place to Die.
Review by Gemma Roxanne Williams.

Are you ready? For the world to end? To be proven wrong. For the pandemic that will make the world drop to its feet and beg for mercy?
Are you ready? For Sam North’s Another Place to Die?

The world is falling apart, the lethal H5N1 bird-flu virus is ravaging the population, and there isn’t time to stop it, there is only time to hide or run. But you can only hide for so long, and where can you run when the whole world is a target to be conquered?

The captivating Fen flees with her family to the mundanity of an Island inhabited only by those who are hiding. But things go wrong, and Fen can’t hide for long, as homes are torched and humans are reduced to their most base nature, it is time to run.

A future analyst, Arno, has given up relying on others, he wants one thing. Rachel. The woman he loves, despite barely knowing her. Together they struggle to outsmart the virus, the carriers and the law. But with an enemy that causes people to literally fall dead all around them, do they even have a chance?

Deka the cabbie refuses to flee. Until bodies start dying in his cab, he refuses to stop work. Clinging desperately to what is left of his life, he is determined to stay, to fight. He swears by Doc Borov’s killer soup, the vaccine of the charming Doc battling to save the population while everyone else is struggling to look after themselves.

The world and its economy collapse a little further with every fallen body. You can’t stay, you can’t run, you can’t hide. Where are the heroes to save the day? No chance, the virus has got them too. Intelligence, beauty, money, they no longer mean anything. There are no get out of jail free cards. The world is no longer our world, it’s the playground of the virus, and we are just toys. But we are toys with free will, and we can choose to fight.

As every day becomes a desperate struggle to live just one more day, humanity is stretched, torn and challenged. That man in the suit who always seemed to be so cool, no longer so calm and collected. And yet that 15 year old girl who you barely notice, suddenly a heroine determined to live against all odds. Human nature is an interesting beast, and the end of the world is one hell of a test.

Beautiful, plausible, and sickeningly addictive, Sam North’s Another Place to Die will terrify you, thrill you, and make you petrified of anyone who comes near you with so much as a sniffle.

Are you ready? Get ready, get the book.