The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Moment: Something goes bump in the night

by Dominic Mercier

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Published: Jun 10, 2009

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The Strain,
by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

If there's one thing you can count on director Guillermo del Toro for, it's monsters. Making his written-word debut this summer with The Strain, he of Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy series of movies takes on the done-to-death vampire myth, but manages to stand it on its head. The first in a trilogy co-written with Chuck Hogan, The Strain opens with a trans-Atlantic flight that, once it hits the tarmac at New York's JFK International, goes completely dead. Sealed tight and noncommunicative, the post-9/11 city is left to presume it's an act of terrorism or biological warfare. Turns out the latter isn't too far off.

The Strain's vampires aren't the angst-ridden teens from your sister's Twilight books, nor are they the eternally young, languid romantics from Anne Rice's canon. Del Toro's vampires are a pestilence — nary a cape nor transformation to bat to be found among them — their thirst for blood stemming from a virus transferable through their bite. But don't expect the cliché fangs to be on blood-drawing duty here; these vampires sport a terrifying 6-foot stinger they can shoot from their mouths, the result of the virus's forced biological evolution.

While The Strain brings with it many likable main characters, it's the first-person accounts of the change from human to vampire that are completely engaging. The raw, visceral feel of the cancerous change is presented in full, gory detail, from the crushing desire to feast on humans to the painful withering of once-vital organs.

While it won't win a Nobel, The Strain is relentlessly entertaining. The book's frenetic, movie-like pacing will have fans screaming for a film adaptation. Given the writer, it's a good bet they'll get their wish.

William Morrow, 416 pp., $26.99, June 2

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