Jonathan Maberry sold Patient Zero to Jason Pinter at St. Martin’s. Agent Sara Crowe of Harvey Klinger negotiated the three-book deal.
Crowe told SFScope that Patient Zero will “kick off a new series of thrillers featuring Joe Ledger, a former Baltimore cop recruited by the newly formed and highly secret Department of Military Sciences. The DMS was created to face a new wave of bio-terrorist threats against America. In Patient Zero, Ledger and the DMS face a terror cell that has weaponized a prion disease that will, if unleashed, turn people into zombies. If the terrorists aren’t stopped before they launch this terrible weapon, the resulting plague will be unstoppable.
“The Joe Ledger series will be fast-paced, character driven, and action packed. The stories are all grounded in real science—but that science is taken to a terrifying new level.”
Maberry won the Bram Stoker Award this year for Best First Novel, for Ghost Road Blues. Maberry has been a professional writer since 1979, but only turned to fiction recently. His web site is at www.jonathanmaberry.com.