Grim futuristic story told with subtlety, wit
Killer T by Robert Muchamore, Hot Key Books, $23. Reviewed by Trevor Agnew.
Robert Muchamore gained literary success when he wrote the sort of novel he wanted to read when he was in that tricky adolescent age gap between children’s novels and adult novels.
The result was the best-selling Cherub series of 28 teen espionage novels.
Killer T is something quite different. Inspired by the works of Malorie Blackman and Melvin Burgess, this follows two teenagers through 10 years of their intertwined lives, showing how their personalities develop and mature. Of course – Muchamore being Muchamore – it’s no ordinary decade that Harry and Charlie live through. Instead they face a terrifying development in terrorism and biological warfare.
We first meet Harry as a 14-year old, who seizes an opportunity of a bomb explosion at his Las Vegas high school to market dramatic video footage. This enables him to kick off his career running a local internet news website, Vegas Local. The bombing brings him close to Charlie, a bright young science student, who has the means, motive and know-how to have done the bombing. She is innocent but nevertheless spends years in detention and supervision because the wealthy and corrupt casino-owning Janssen family need a scapegoat.
The ‘‘Killer T’’ of the title is one of several deadly viruses spreading around the planet. The London Haemorrhaging Virus, for example, which
crosses the Atlantic early in the story, ‘‘liquifies our internal organs and makes us drown slowly in our own blood’’.
Gene-editing equipment has made genetic modification so easy that many people have themselves modified for everything from better physique to improved memory. Of course, illegal genetic work has also produced gigantic soldiers and cheerfully mindless zombies.
Charlie and Harry are starcrossed lovers fighting to survive in a violent, corrupt world, which is a never-fail plot.
Fortunately, Charlie spent her time as Inmate B3790 studying non-exploding science and, once free, she is able to work at gene splicing and modification. This doesn’t exactly stop civilisation from collapsing but since the setting for Killer T is Las Vegas, it would be hard to tell the difference anyway.
Muchamore has the ability to sketch in quick character descriptions that make a lasting impression, so the reader has no difficulty coping with the large cast, who fight, invent, lie, suffer, swindle, monopolise, and murder their way through the 461 pages of Killer T.
Their names are catchy as well: one character is named Mango, another Helen Back, while a nun – Sister Miraculous – deserves a book of her own.
By using screens from Harry’s Vegas Local website, Muchamore bridges his time-jumps with subtlety and wit. The idea of a future where wealthy survivors wear Nike and Gucci virus masks is grimly plausible.