THE JAKARTA PANDEMIC: A Modern Thriller (Alex Fletcher) Paperback – November 4, 2010

So I bought this book because I've been on an apocalyptic / zombie kick for about a year. I usually read mostly non fiction. History, economics, even books about physics and math. Any fiction I do read is usually the stuff of dead authors. Crime and punishment, brothers k being my favorite. I got this on the kindle and in spite of the fact my wife just had our third child, I still finished it in less than a week. I read it constantly! Any time I could find in the day, I'd open the kindle and read as many pages as I could. The books setting is southern Maine and is centered around a former Marine who is now a drug rep and a family man living the typical suburban life. Haunted by his memories of Iraq, he is driven to protect his family against any and all threats. Much like many combat vets, what they fear most is the things they cannot control. In this case, a massive flu pandemic that rivals that of the Spanish flu of 1918. The author does an incredible job of painting a picture of a man who is aware of how fragile the American way of life is after having seen first hand what chaos and anarchy can do to a society. He is not a gun nut or any type of extremist but rather a man who lives the life many American males do today. Goes to work and tries his best to provide for his family and protect them. As a particularly virulent flu virus starts to sweep the globe, he tries to prepare his family and friends and talk about precautions to keep from getting sick, but as the story unfolds the world is sadly unprepared and unwilling to take the simple precautions he advocates. This is not a book that stars John Rambo as the last man alive in a neighborhood fighting off hordes of mutant bikers. Rather, it is the much more frightening and frankly more likely scenario, where a bad influenza strain iis compounded by winter weather and an inability of the government to provide essential service like electricity, sewer, and plowed roads. It then cascades into social unrest and the breakdown of the suburban construct. The simple things like helping babysit your neighbors kids can your family to be put at risk by the outbreak. The author is very good at building conflict in the book and weaves a story that many times had me unable to put the book down due to rapid heartbeat and a desire to read just one more page. The action is believable, and the characters very likely represent the people who live on your block. The protagonist is the classic anti hero who is torn between protecting his family at all costs and doing what heretofore had been the expected right thing to do in the neighborhood. All in all, this is a great book and a nice twist on the post apocolyptic genre. My only complaint would be in some lack of tying up some of the loose ends and story lines that appear. Hopefully the author will post an epilogue to do just that.This book is perfect for the post apocalyptic fans out there as well as preppers, and people who just love a great suspense filled story.

Alex Fletcher is an marine who left active duty eight years ago and is now a pharmaceutical rep with a bit of paranoia about the latest impending pandemic flu assault. The year is 2013, and he has vivid memories of the pandemic of '08 and the less noteworthy panic that occurred in '12 after a swine flu outbreak. Since he works for a pharma company that provides one of the leading flu treatments, it is essentially his job to pay attention to all the reports on how bad this new outbreak is likely to be. That plus the fact that he spends much of his time with doctors who deal with infectious diseases on a regular basis, he is hunkering down for what amounts to the viral equivalent of World War III.Alex is paranoid, and under regular circumstances might be considered somewhat of a flake. He suffers from post traumatic stress after his time in Iraq, and his house is set up with all the fixin's to prepare him for a long hold out against the flu with food, water, his own power supplies, and plenty of guns and ammo. His plan is simple: isolate himself and his family from everyone else and they will make it through the flu outbreak just fine, even as the world crumbles around them. Yep, Alex would be probably a bit wacky if it wasn't for the fact that he is absolutely right about what is about to go down.And despite Alex's unheeded warnings to his neighbors to isolate themselves, stock up on food and water, things do go bad rather quickly for them, with food not getting delivered to grocery stores, hospitals getting filled up with flu patients, sickness running rampant and a danger of the power grid going out since less and less people are monitoring and maintaining it. Essentially, Alex has predicted a crash of catastrophic proportions, and that is exactly what happens. And with it, the natives get restless and turn their ire toward the most prepared member of their community. Alex has good intentions, but refuses to be sucked into communal expectations that he play ball and share all his food and every last flu treatment he held on to before quitting his pharmaceutical job. On top of that, scavengers have moved into Alex's upscale suburban neighborhood in a desperate attempt to find food and shelter as riots and overall madness have driven them out of the bigger cities, and they are even more dangerous than the neighbors.The Jarkarta Pandemic is a well laid out story of one man's quest to keep his family safe during a devastating assault on their existence. I read a lot of apocalyptic fiction, and while this doesn't quite tip over into the realm of apocalyptic, it gives us a hefty dose of how the apocalypse could realistically occur in our world. It does share some similarities with some of the other stories I read in that genre in that it shows how desperate people can become, and how hard the choices are when your family is at stake and so is your survival. Alex reminds me of one of those guys on message boards who talks about how they're prepared for the end of the world, whether it be by natural disaster, plague, or even zombies.The action sequences are compelling in this book, though I wish there was more of them, and more drawn out tension between the main character and the people who confront him. A lot of the tale is spent with the build up to the pandemic and the slow, boring days Alex and his family spend cloistered inside their home. We are given only one perspective-Alex's, and only find out what is happening to the outside world through his observations of the news on TV and via the internet. It does help provide a sort of closed off perspective, because we as readers know nothing more than Alex does from minute to minute about what is happening in the wider world or even outside his house as they get buried deeper and deeper into the Maine winter. Still, I did feel that parts of the story dragged and did wish for more of a psychological thriller showcasing more people like Todd, Alex's on edge neighbor, and the man Alex dubs "Manson". I felt like the scenes where Alex was dealing with them crackled with energy and craved more of that in this story.The bottom line is that this was a well thought out, entertaining story, though I was left wanting more interaction between Alex and his key rivals. It is my understanding that this story was recently re-edited, so the typographical issues prior reviewers on Amazon brought up didn't deflect from the story too much for me. The only real issue I had was when the author slips into present tense on occasion, which was a distraction when the rest of the time he sticks with the traditional past tense. Otherwise, the story kept my interest and was an enjoyable read about an intriguing subject that had a bitter and frightening dose of realism to it.

Well written and very engaging from the get-go. This was written before the covid-19 pandemic but there are a lot a scary similarities to events that actually happened.Can't wait to read the 2nd one.

A well written book which lays out the storyline in a timely manner without losing the readers interest. A very large percentage of the population around the world is dying but this story centres around one neighbourhood. One man and his family have prepped for something like this. Knowing when to quarantine themselves and how to cope with neighbours begging for food and medicines, the story goes on, plotting neighbour against neighbour and squatters join the mix. This book is begging to be made into a film.

it was ok

There are already a few reviews here covering so much. Let me first say that I really enjoyed the book. There are so many poor virus novels out there (Don't get me started on zombies [so angry]). So to find a genuine attempt at surviving a possible world changing event this book is great. The scope is very limited and for it works well as that's what I expected. If you want a view of the the world world in these events then you don't get them. This is Alex's story. The book does drag on but each of these events seems only exists to prepare us for seriousness of events to come. I guess some readers needed this. I found it an enjoyable read despite a few minor flaws that I could not put down!The only really bizarre aspect of the book which was written about 2010, and set in 2013 was it reference's to a fictional outbreak in 2008. This really confused me. At first I really believed the author just had their facts wrong about past events in the world but as the novel moved on it become more more event that had just made it up! I can't see any real reason to do this? It just confused me. Why? The described 2013 outbreak is all possible without this fiction? This to me undermined the valid premise of the novel. There is appendix which seems to confirm this.Anybody please correct me if you had a different understanding I really don't get it.

Slow, dragging events from a cast of characters that are truly unlikable, punctuated by completely unnecessary, and overly-long news stories and racist rants that stuck out like a sore thumb. Less than a third of the way through the book I just wanted the virus to kill off everyone so I didn't have to listen to the horribly-written dialogue. No one talks like that in real life. Some of the worst writing I've ever come across.