The Missing (2007)

Written by Sarah Langan
2008, Harper Collins
Langan's Website

If you missed Sarah Langan's debut horror novel The Keeper you really missed out. If you also didn’t get a chance to read The Missing (published as Virus in the UK), you REALLY missed out. The Missing is a violently fun little romp into a world where people drop like flies and turn into monsters. Oh, and they eat the people left. Langan sets her story in the same world as her first novel – the world of small towns like Corpus Christie and Bedford, Maine, where affluent families have terrible secrets that make their lives living hells. Literally.

It's the epitome of great post-9/11 horror; outbreaks, violence, terror, all linked to corporate or government negligence or our own naiveté. The small town of Corpus Christie has been invaded by a virus – not the flu or anything, but something far more complex and frightening. When a small and troubled boy from a decent, nice family indulges on some gruesome whims in the woods between Bedford and Corpus Christie, he lets the virus go. The people of Bedford has burned it dead years before, and destroyed their community in the process. Now, through shear happenstance, the virus starts spreading through the people of Corpus Christie. First, the virus seeks the right victims. If you aren’t right, it will just kill you. You'll be lucky. If you are right, it will invade your mind and start driving you crazy. It will also slowly change you physically so that you can’t even notice you're becoming – different. Once the change is complete you might even be happier, more complete, and more adjusted to this world. Only you'll have to be okay with devouring things while they are still alive.

Into this nightmare situation are thrust average people with marital problems, unfulfilled schoolteachers, and unloved teenagers. As their world around them crumbles, so do their relationships and they figure out how they really feel about one another. Like a zombie film, it focuses on the deterioration of society and the lack of aid from the government, but it also gives us the side of the changed, so that we get both sides of what’s happening. There are no mindless zombies in The Missing. Everyone’s personality is quite strong, even the infected, and only continue to develop more and more strongly throughout.

A surprising quality of Langan’s writing is that she continually creates extremely complex female characters that seem to suffer from emotional problems caused by the men in their lives. Husbands, fathers, boyfriends – the majority of Langan’s women are unfulfilled and almost welcome their deaths or changes because they’re hoping they’ll be happier in their new, viral, lives.

Langan is rapidly being shot to the levels of King, Barker, and other successful horror writers. She’s only had two novels published, but they’re amazing feats in a world and genre saturated with aspiring horror writers. Langan’s really got something, and if you don’t want to be out of the loop, you’d best get reading.