Cold Plague - Book Review

Cold Plague
Daniel Kalla
Tor Publishing
March 2008 (HC)
November 2008 (PB)
Daniel Kalla's website





A brand new book - well new paperback anyway. I grabbed this off the shelf at the supermarket this morning and finished reading it 10 hours later. Could not put it down. Mainly becaue of Prions. I have read only one other novel about prions (Amazonia by James Rollins) and they fascinate me, even if they are deadly.

The Antarctica also interests me as well. Again because I used to live not too far from that continent. And it is within the realm of possibility that man possibly used to live on the Antarctic continent when it was much warmer. But I digress.

Prions are like viruses except that they have no DNA and no RNA so they are NOT alive. BUT they can replicate. Heating, freezing and sterilizing prions does NOT kill them.

On the front cover of the paperback is a testimonial review from a newspaper.
Michael Crichton ought to be looking over his shoulder. He has some serious competition in Kalla.

Sadly and ironically Michael Crichton died on the same day the paperback was published. November 4th, 2008.

Anyway, this book is the authors fourth book. His main character Noah Haldane was also the hero of the last book - PANDEMIC. I gotta read Pandemic. If its as good at Cold Plague is, I gotta read it.

Ok Historia - Cut the chatter - tell them about Cold Plague.

Imagine a huge underground lake in the Antarctica. The size of Lake Michigan and similar to Lake Vostok. With millions of tons of pure pristine water, millions of years old and completely untouched by pollution.

Meanwhile, a cluster of new cases of Mad Cow disease explodes in Limoges, France. Dr. Noah Haldane and his WHO team are urgently summoned. Noah recognizes the deadliness of a prion that kills with the speed and ferocity of a virus, but he suspects factors other than nature have ignited its spread among animals and people in France. Facing a spate of disappearances and unexplained deaths, he uncovers a conspiracy that stretches from Moscow to Beverly Hills, and from the North to the South Pole.

He soon realizes that the scientific find of the century--the body of water the size of Lake Michigan buried under the Antarctic ice--might hold the key to a microscopic Jurassic Park. And someone wants to MARKET that water as a natural cure.


Born and raised in Vancouver, Dan Kalla is as an Emergency Room physician and author of five suspense and medical thriller. His works have been translated into ten languages, and two of his novels, Resistance and Pandemic, have been optioned for film.

Cold Plague is his first sequel, to the novel, Pandemic. Next year, his epic multi-generational novel, Hospital, will be released. At forty-one, Dan is married and the father of two girls. When not doctoring or writing, he is an avid skier and hockey player.