I love Op Shops, especially their book sections. The St Vincent’s in Queenscliff, on the Vic coast, has the standard arrangement of 50c/paperback, and a lot of junk that you have to sort through to find anything worthwhile. But at 50c each, I think it’s worth spending a bit of time – and for me, $3.50 went an amazingly long way.

One of the books I got was John Case’s The First Horseman. Never heard of him, or it – although he also wrote The Genesis Code, which sounds familiar. Standard blurb – why, who, what? – clearly this was going to be about some sort of plague, but it’s not for a while that you find out it’s about someone doing bad things with the influenza virus. Written in 1998, it’s still quite a relevant topic, I think – bioweapons, etc, although currently North Korea (who get a look-see in this) are threatening with nuclear arms, not bio.

I liked it; not quite as trashy as I had expected, but not exactly the sort of thing to make you think particularly hard either. A nice range of characters: the not-beautiful-yet-still-appealing female scientist, intrepid journalist, etc etc… Some nice plot developments too; I wasn’t sure whether I liked the family stuff being put in, but I think in the end it served to deepen the main character a bit, which was fine: it didn’t detract from the story, either. I do like a book that is fine with hurting its main goodies, and not giving them superhero endurance (something like McLean in Die Hard).

I’m going looking for The Genesis Code.