The bird flu is back and worse than ever. There is a wall around San Antonia and no one is allowed in or out. The scientists inside the wall refuse to admit that the flu is mutating. Lily, the heroine of the story, tries to keep her family life at home as normal as possible, she realizes they must escape in order to let the press and the people know what is going on behind the wall. ( )

A murder mystery set in post influenza apocalypse San Antonio where the city has been quarantined from the rest of the country.

Two detectives find a body and then set out to establish what happened to her. I found the story had a lot going for it and really drew you in but the ending seemed quite abrupt and thought a lot better could have been done exploring the outcomes of decisions made towards the end. ( )

Okay. First things first. This book has nothing to do with zombies. Absolutely nothing...

What it does have to do with is a murder/detective story set in a city that was quarantined because of a viral outbreak that kills 16% of the people it infects.

It was pretty realistic... well, the setting and goings-on that occur within the quarantined city was realistic. The belief that a government would be able to successfully seal off a city with flown in barricades before someone "escaped" to spread the virus to the rest of the country was a bit on the naive side. When the virus that ends up jumping species to wipe out 20-30% of us arrives, it will be spread much much too fast for any government to lock it down as quickly as they do in this story.

It wasn't very original, or stunningly written, but it was a decent story, with engaging enough characters that they don't really drive you crazy. The main character was female, and the author does need a bit more experience living as/with a woman because the woman here is written as a stereotype... (i.e. an entire scene is written around her having a bath and shaving her legs... like that would be a priority in a virally infected world where she has a murder to solve). And there are periodic (and fortunately short) tirades about women's self-esteem as affected by magazines, Republican suppression, and evil organizations who would rather let millions of people die than lose out on potential profits.

Anyway... it's a quick read, with some insights on what "real life" might be like in a quarantined city... ( )

In Quarantined, a cop discovers a murdered body lying among the bodies of plague victims slotted for mass burial. They begin to investigate the murder and uncover important information about the pandemic which would incite mass panic if discovered.
I didn't like the book very much for a few reasons.

The main character is a lady cop, and that was a mistake on the author's part. There was really no reason why the main character should have been a woman, and the author does not write convincingly as a woman at all. If the main character was a man, the book would probably have been about 25% less painful.

*May contain spoilers*
I also didn't find the story convincing. There wasn't enough detail to really make it believable. They believe that the murder victim was murdered in a part of town known as "Ground Zero," so they go out there and investigate. Once out there, they're shot at by a bunch of looters who hang around the area salvaging supplies. You would think that a police character would at least acknowledge this as a possible murder scenario, but its largely ignored till almost 50 pages later. Then, its only identified as an afterthought. The logic used in several scenarios was warped and eye-roll inducing.

Also, the book description makes it sound like the main character's escape from the quarantine is a major part of the story. Its pretty much the END of the story. Escaping isn't even a major part of the story, it takes like...10 pages or so, and most of that is just the characters discussing their escape. After they escape, life is hunky-dory and the book just stops. I would say ends, but it kind of has a non-ending.

Overall, I wouldn't say its a terrible book, but it is pretty bad. ( )

Quarantined by Joe McKinney is a good, solid, detective story set in the shambles of a quarantined San Antonio, Texas. Lily, a homicide detective, and her tough partner Chunk doggedly struggle to solve a murder in a plague-infested San Antonio, while the city falls apart around them. Part human interest, part mystery, and part apocalyptic survival tale, Quarantined is well worth reading. ( )