BITTER PARADISE

Infectious-disease specialist Pennie (Beneath the Wake, 2017, etc.) brews up a complicated medical mystery that puts a great many people in danger.

Ontario Public Health epidemic investigator Dr. Zol Szabo’s teenage son, Max, and his friend Travis are getting their hair cut when someone enters the shop and attacks Marwan, one of the barbers. Hosam, another barber, is a Syrian refugee and experienced trauma surgeon whose considerable skills cannot save the savagely injured man. As Zol, and even Max and Travis, works feverishly with his fiancee, Natasha, another investigator, to find the source of a sudden outbreak of polio, Hosam, formerly a wealthy and respected doctor, struggles to raise the money to become a licensed Canadian physician. His wife, Leila, a dentist also barred from practicing legally in Canada, uses the money from the secret dental clinic for poor refugees she runs out of their garage to support the family while Hosam studies. Marwan had told Hosam he was being coerced to do illegal jobs by a shadowy figure known as the Caliph, and now that he’s gone, Hosam is forced to take his place. It’s hard for Zol to track the relationships and contacts of many of the polio victims because they’re refugees who speak little English. And since the outbreak is not caused by the usual polio virus but instead by a parvovirus, the team must consider a wide range of possible carriers, including starfish. When further tests reveal that the victims also carry Zika antibodies, the investigators ask where the patients could have contracted that disease, still considered tropical even though mosquitoes carrying it have been found near the Niagara River. Flowers, gangsters, and video games will all play a role in the quest for the truth.

A masterly mélange of medicine and murder with a topical look at the myriad problems refugees face.