Some books take a while to find their legs and get going but this is not one of them. Right from the beginning I found my curiosity piqued and I was rooting for Joe Ledger even though I still didn't know too much about him. Jonathan Maberry does an excellent job of story telling in Patient Zero by the manner in which he reveals the bigger picture while at the same time providing increased insight into the man that is Joe Ledger. Patient Zero is a bit of a mash-up of 24 with a zombie apocalypse and things remain interesting from cover to cover.
The Department of Military Sciences (DMS) is an ultra-secret government agency that protects the US from extreme threats and it is woefully unprepared as a potential zombie apocalypse arrives on the doorstep. To make matters worse the threat is not an accident as the US finds itself the target of an explicitly bio-engineered outbreak. External extremists are banking on the fact that even if the US somehow prevents the outbreak the economy will be crippled as funds are poured into finding a pharmaceutical cure for the pathogen at the heart of this threat. It is up to the DMS to make sure that neither scenario comes to pass.
The foundation for the rest series gets erected in this book as the main characters are all established. The main protagonist is Joe Ledger, a Baltimore detective and ex-soldier with a uncanny ability to never hesitate under pressure. Ledger was mentally broken as a teenager after being forced to watch his girlfriend repeatedly raped. Her eventual suicide led Ledger to channel his inner rage into martial arts, a military career, and finally his role as a detective. He manages to get by but he is always on the edge of not keeping it together. That is where Rudy Sanchez comes in. Rudy is the Baltimore police force psychiatrist and also Joe's best friend. He is a big reason why Joe has been able to keep it together over the years. Then there is Mr. Church, the mysterious leader of the DMS who created the MindReader program that is able to extract information from any other computer system in existence. Many speculate that Mr. Church holds sway over many powerful world leaders because of MindReader's ability to unearth the skeleton in every closet. Mr. Church has a "friend" in every industry and he always manages to obtain technology that nobody else can get their hands on. He also has a cookie fetish - vanilla wafers to be exact.
Patient Zero is a complete story that wraps up nicely but there are many more books in the series. Joe Ledger may be a bit cliché with the whole channeled rage backstory but I still found him an interesting lead character and his inner monologue will often make you chuckle. Ray Porter narrates the audiobook and he does an excellent job voicing all of the characters. Overall, an excellent start and I am eagerly moving forward to the rest of the series.