The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian

"...[he] would be called, with the gallows humor of the beleaguered who fear that death is but a sneeze distant, the Rat King."

A timely global thriller that hits all the right notes in the current atmosphere -- basically it's a suspenseful story about a plague bacteria carried by rats. So, if you are triggered by reading about rats, you definitely are going to want to avoid this. There's a lot of detail.

But, back to the story. A young man, Austin Harper, works at a large university hospital in New York in the fundraising and development wing. His girlfriend, ER physician, Alexis Remnick, accompanies him on a trip to Vietnam, ostensibly on a bike tour but Austin claims he also wants to find the sites there where his uncle died and his father was wounded when they were posted there during the Vietnam War. When Austin doesn't return to the Villa Haldina Hotel in Hoi An after a solo bike ride one afternoon, Alexis contacts the local police and the Consulate. When the FBI legal attaché stationed at the US embassy gets involved the search for the missing Austin Harper shifts into high gear. As things evolve, Alexis discovers that she did not know Austin well at all and it turns out that he was involved with something completely unexpected and terribly wrong. NO SPOILERS.

Just read this. I really enjoyed it, not only because of the medical and science facts which I love, but the story is fast-paced and so realistic. The anticipation of what was going to happen kept me flipping the pages and I only wish I could have had a couple of hours to read it all in one sitting as I was always thinking about what was going to happen next whenever I had to put it down. Chris Bohjalian is an excellent writer (I've read every one of his books) and he always manages to surprise me by tackling so many different topics and does an incredible amount of research. I learned a lot about rats and disease; I'll be thinking about all the possibilities and suffer some anxiety for awhile. I thought he did a good job of giving us characters that were interesting and relatable. I was going to wait to read this closer to publication date, but the lure was too strong and I succumbed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for this e-book ARC to read, review and recommend.

This is a standalone and is not part of any series.
Genre -- medical, global thriller, plague, RATS