Anthrax Island (2021) by D.L. Marshall

Observe the book title of today's review, note the publication date and, most important of all, take a close look at the cover and you'll see a typical example of a modern thriller I normally never even notice – let alone giving it a second glance. D.L. Marshall's Anthrax Island (2021) came to my attention with an impressive testimonial and the promise of a clever locked room mystery sweetened the deal. 

Steve Barge, of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, praised Anthrax Island as "one of the best modern mysteries" he has read in ages and picked it as his 2021 "Book of the Year." Not to get ahead of the review, but yeah, I can't disagree. Anthrax Island has the exterior of a claustrophobic spy-thriller with an immersive setting, "cloak-and-dagger shit" and plenty of action, which camouflages a clever plot that belongs to the traditional detective story. It has everything from an isolated island setting, chart included, to an impossible murder and a stockpile of unshakable alibis. What really surprised me is how much the plot resembled a Japanese shin honkaku mystery, but more on that in a minute. So let's dive in!

The setting and backstory of Marshall's Anthrax Island is real, Gruinard Island, where during the Second World War experiments were carried out to weaponize "deadly anthrax spores" in order to decimate Germany's livestock and ensure whatever remains is prioritized for the military – as "villages, towns and cities across the Reich starve." A good enough plan to destabilize and break the enemy in their home country, "whilst leaving infrastructure intact," but, despite successfully weaponizing anthrax, the order was never given. So the isolated, uninhabited test site was sealed off from the public and Gruinard Island was declared "a no-go area," because the weaponized spores had rendered the place "inhospitable for humans and animals alike." During the 1980s, the island was finally decontaminated and declared anthrax-free in 1990, but "almost eighty years of mutations had made Gruinard a unique petri dish." Completely by accident, the island had grown and nurtured an aggressive new strain of super-anthrax that's "worth more than plutonium for any government research department."

So these "mutant spores" had been "sleeping quietly under the dirt for years until a storm had brought them to the surface" to "sit in the grass and be eaten by the reintroduced sheep." The island went back under quarantine until the present-day.

An international research team returned to Gruinard Island to do a survey and prepare a second clean-up operation, which the American used to test the airtight design of their newest Antarctic research outpost in a hostile environment. This research outpost (X-Base) has to be described, because it really helped set the scene and give you the idea the story takes place in a dead, desolate post-apocalyptic landscape.

X-Base is a collection of ten, bright orange prefab cabins, on stilts, forming a U shape on a plateau near the south-western coast and each cabin is connected to the next with "a small plastic tunnel." So the layout can be reconfigured suited to the circumstances of its location. Interestingly, every group on the island has its own color of protective suits ("techs, blue. Naturally, Army wear green. Yellow for the scientists") to make identification outside easier. I suppose some of my regular readers will be getting a pretty good idea why Anthrax Island reminded me of a shin honkaku-style mystery and which series in specific. But I'll get to that in a moment. The problems in the story begin when the onsite technician unexpectedly dies and one of the decontamination chambers malfunctioned, which trapped some of the scientific team inside X-Base.

This introduces Marshall's lead-character into the story, John Tyler, who's dispatched to the island to fix the problem and discovers that the door of the decontamination chamber had been sabotages, which is when events begin to snowball and pile up – a dead body disappears, someone tried to take out Tyler and the murders. The first murder happens when the supposed would-be murderer is seen banging on the door of the radio, yelling at the person inside, before entering and a gunshot is heard. When they enter the room they find the radio room's occupant, shot through the eye, but not a trace of his murderer. Everyone assumes the murderer had simply left through the sliding window ("crime isn't a consideration in the Antarctic"). Tyler knows that was the murderer's exit, because he had screwed the window shut before hand. This is not the only team member who receives a "7.65mm lobotomy" when "everyone on the island had an alibi." And then there's the mystery of John Tyler. Who's he and what are his true motives.

I really liked Tyler's almost game-like exploration of the locations on the island and even uncovering a hidden area, which combined with the post-apocalyptic aesthetics added something different to the traditionally-styled plot and detection. I don't recall having ever come across something even remotely similar! Maybe, if your generous, The Kamikakushi Village Murder Case from Detective Academy Q, but the resemblance is merely a distant one.

I'm always tempted to draw comparisons between detective novels, short stories and writers in attempt to show where they, genealogically speaking, stand in the genre and its history. You can blame the influence of Mike Grost's A Guide to Classic Mystery & Detection website. Anthrax Island is not an easy one to place. The book covers a variety of genres and sub-genres, ranging from action and spy-thrillers to the traditional detective story and locked room mystery. Some more specific comparisons can be made. Such as how the disastrous development of biological weapons on a lifeless island recalls Herbert Brean's The Clock Strikes Thirteen (1954), the discussion of the anthrax strains mirroring the "characterization" of the botulism bacteria in Douglas Clark's The Longest Pleasure (1981) and the locked room murder naturally inviting comparisons to John Dickson Carr. John Tyler's character definitely has a touch of Hake Talbot's Rogan Kincaid. However, as the story and plot progressed, I kept thinking of it as a Westernized version of The Kindaichi Case Files.

Firstly, there's the isolated island setting with a tightly-knit, closed-circle of suspects, which is a popular, often used setup in the series and has practically become a part of its formula – e.g. the whole Utashima Island saga. Secondly, the combination of one, or more, impossible crimes with an alibi-puzzle (The Legendary Vampire Murders and The Ghost Fire Island Murder Case). Thirdly, The Antlion Trench Murder Case, which has a setting nearly similar to Anthrax Island. A military research facility, somewhere in a remote desert, comprising of a cluster of pod-like buildings linked together by snake-like corridors and the participants wear color-coded kiminos. This is likely a coincidence as I doubt Marshall has read or is even aware of The Kindaichi Case Files and the locked room-trick suggests Carr was the inspiration for the plot (ROT13: gur gevpx nccrnef (VVEP) gb or n erjbexvat va erirefr bs Gur Guveq Ohyyrg). But found it interesting how it reminded me of Kindaichi. Only with the teenage detective tossed out and replaced with a cynical, quasi-alcoholic action hero.

So whether, or not, the author was familiar with that series, I found the part of the story taking place on the island to be engrossing and a proper detective plot, a locked room murder, pesky alibis and "nosy acronyms" in abundance made it so much more than another flavor-of-the-month thriller. Not only as very well done hybrid of the action, spy, thriller and detective genres, but future genre scholars will also find it an interesting snapshot of the anxieties of the early 2020s concerning deadly deceases, quarantining and even a Russian treat with a possible landing on the island hovering in the background. The last part of Anthrax Island shift gears as Tyler leaves the island and the story begins to resemble a fast-paced 1980s or '90s action movie, but returns in time to HMS Dauntless to tie up all the loose ends. Like a proper detective!

Marshall's Anthrax Island managed to pull an impressive juggling act with the detective, spy and thriller genres, all in their various guises, while the characters plot and counter-plot set against an original and unforgettable setting – beautifully demonstrating that a modern thriller or crime novel doesn't have to be trash. Just a tiny bit of competent plotting can do miracles for even the most modern of modern thrillers. So a lot to recommend here and you can expect to see this one back in December when I do my annual best-of list. And, until then, I'll be looking at the second John Tyler novel, Black Run (2021), which has been jotted down on my wishlist.

On a final, somewhat related note: Damn you, Steve! Damn you! First Paul Doherty, then Brian Flynn and now D.L. Marshall. Well, at least this time you found me one who's still at the ground floor instead of already having a massive backlog or an absolutely obscurity who had been out-of-print for decades.