Peak Plague Mystery

Peak Plague Mystery by S.A. Fearn is young adult novel is an educational medical murder mystery. The story begins with Dr Benec Kovac, a physician who felt that he was doing work that would be responsible for saving thousands of lives throughout the world. He may be doing great work, but he is unethically and illegally conducting medical experiments on humans without their knowledge. Rebecca Johnson is a student attending High Peak High School. She discovers unwittingly discovers a secret and she later mysteriously dies in a fire. Was the fire an accident, suicide, or did someone kill Rebecca? Five years later, a group of students arrive at High Peak and are almost immediately drawn into the mystery surrounding Rebecca. Some people feel that Rebecca may be a ghost and the students are eager to find out what really happened to Rebecca. While solving the mystery, the students will uncover the truth about what s happening at High Peak.

I freely admit that there were times where I felt like I was reading a science textbook as I found out information about bacteria, viruses, pathogens, bacteriophages, and phage therapy. Some of these I have never even heard of before reading this book. I also learned some information about brilliant scientists who were on the cutting edge of medicine and how viruses are excellent natural destroyers of some bacteria without the use of antibiotics. I'm a bit on the nerdy side, so I was interested to learn this information. However, it was still a bit much and there were times where I felt like I was back in high school or in an introductory class in college.

Overall, I did like this story, but it felt a bit clunky to me. It definitely felt more like a textbook in some places and that I was doing an assigned reading . I actually think it might be useful for high school science teachers to use with a class learning about the body's defenses against bacterial infections. It really was quite fascinating. With that being said, I wish there was more mystery and less science.

I'm a morbid soul and the current pandemic has made me want to read more books about plagues and pandemics, not less, so this was very timely and apposite for me. I ended up loving this engaging, intelligent medical murder mystery which draws on virology and bacteriology as clues to main plot. The author clearly knows her subject - I'm a hobbyist when it comes to epidemiology (yes I'm enough of a nerd that I read that stuff for fun even though my biology degree is now two decades old) - but she blends it well with a genuine mystery thriller and some very plausible plot. The characters were engaging and the pace was good. Recommend for fans of PintipDunn's Maelys and Emily Suvada's This Mortal Coil or anyone who enjoyed Mira Grant's Newsflesh series.

I throughly enjoyed reading this book from
Beginning to end and was instantly hooked into the story and the characters, I can’t wait to read more from this author

Overall I liked the book. Nevertheless, I think that at times it was hard to keep up with the story because it mixes different timelines. Anyways, I thought this book was fitting for the quarantine.

Very difficult book to get into. Seemed to be rushed and too many things happening at once.please dont let this put you off as not everyone has the same views

This story appealed to me because it's one of the very, very few set in my home county (not one of the home counties!) in England. I;m not tlakign botu books that mention Derbyshire. Jane Austen seemed to have a fondness for it, and Chatsworth House, in central Derbyshire, is often used as an outdoor reference for a country manor in those period films. The only other novel I can ever recall reading was one I read years ago about vampires. This one is nothing like that, although it deals with something quite deadly, and very real: something that's popularly known as Bubonic plague, although it can surface in two other forms, or simply, The Black Death!

Contrary to popular perception, this plague did not die out in Medieval times. It's still very much alive and well. Over a thousand people get the plague every year. Just last year (2019 as this is written) two people died of Pneumonic plague in Mongolia. At least since the year 2000, there have been cases every year in the USA. Derbyshire had its very own outbreak at a place called Eyam (pronounced 'eem' which is located in the Derbyshire Dales, close to the area where this novel is set.

To my knowledge it's not been since in Britain since then, but in 1665, Bubonic plague was transported from London on a roll of cloth that was infested by the vector of the disease: fleas. It began to wreak havoc on Eyam. Untreated with antibiotics, plague can have a 60% mortality rate and Eyam wasn't a very large village. It still isn't with a population of around a thousand. The saddest case I think, is that of Elizabeth Hancock. She somehow managed to remain uninfected. Perhaps she had a natural immunity, but her entire family: six children and her husband, died in the space of a week. I've visited their graves.

This novel is set in the Peak District, a beautiful area in the northwest bulge of Derbyshire. Four young friends take an interest in the strange death of a girl who was at the time of their own age, but from a few years before. The death was ruled a suicide, but Adam, his sister Chloe, and their friends Adele and Jonathan start to realize that Rebecca Johnson did not kill herself. She was murdered in a cover-up. Now the four of them are at risk because of what they know!

Call me biased if you like, but I enjoyed this story. It's adventurous, original, educational, engrossing, and I commend it as a worthy read.