Bleak Midwinter Book

If you are one of the lucky ones who read Peter Millar's Stealing Thunder, a first novel of much skill and ingenuity, you'll be aware that Millar is a writer whose work is garnished with meticulously researched historical detail. The second novel is, of course, a tricky proposition for many writers, but Bleak Midwinter is even more striking than the first book, with its terrifying vision of plague threatening the City of Oxford. Shortly before Christmas, Rajiv Mahendra (who is a trainee doctor at an Oxford hospital) encounters a patient whose rare symptoms remind him of his native India--and a disease he fears, bubonic plague. This continent has been untouched since the Black Death killed one-third of the population centuries ago, but history looks set to repeat itself. A young history student, Daniel Warren, steals into the hospital to find out more about the patient, and then a woman reporter for a local newspaper discovers what is happening. Soon we are gripped by a narrative in which the tension is steadily screwed tighter, and Millar undoubtedly knows his stuff. Will it remain possible to contain the secret as more and more people learn the truth? And might the bacteria have been accidentally awakened from its dormant state, with hideous carnage the result? As before, Millar freights in the historical detail as a striking counterpoint to his modern narrative (of considerable significance is the small village of Nether Ditchford, whose entire population died in the winter of 1348-49), while his characters are never dwarfed as the massive threat of a new Black Death looms ever larger. Dialogue, too, has a sharp authenticity that gives the nightmare a grim plausibility. --Barry ForshawRead More