Thirteen Hours - Francis Gideon

[goodreads]

Title: Thirteen Hours
Author: Francis Gideon
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 1.5/5
# pages: 73 pages
Date read: January 2017

Hans longs to be accepted by his academic peers. When he discovers a cure for the ongoing zombie crisis, he thinks he's finally achieved that goal - only to be stripped of his rank and unceremoniously tossed out on the streets.

With nowhere else to turn, Hans, his wife, and her lover Joan look for solutions in other areas, cobbling together a lab and supplies by scrounging the back alleys of London. The only thing they lack is a body to experiment on.

When the body of a young man shows up, it's almost too good to be true. Hans has only thirteen hours to work, but he's determined to prove himself. The clock is ticking, and nothing is ever as easy as it seems...


If goodreads hadn't told me otherwise, I'd have assumed this was Francis Gideon's first book. The plot showed definite potential, but was very poorly executed and the characters were two-dimensional and caricatures. The writing was choppy and needed editing, and at a mere 73 pages, the author wanted to do far too much, and had to rush through the various stages of the plot (which actually turned out to be a good thing... I doubt I would have finished it, had it been much longer). For a book containing zombies, it was awfully tame, with not even the fear of an attack to add tension to the story, and unfortunately the main love-story seemed tacked on and completely unbelievable.

A shame.