The Patron Saint of Plagues by Barth Anderson
Well-written, excellently paced medical thriller about an outbreak of a terrorist-designed form of dengue in a future Holy Renaissance-run Mexico City. The science fiction elements (chiefly, the pilone network that allows instant communication among those who have had the surgery) are key to the plot and its resolution, but rarely take center stage. The characters are complicated and human, dealing with difficult situations on multiple levels of emotion, religion, science, and politics.
I confess to being put off by the prologue, which features a religious whore being deliberately infected, but the rest of the novel is worth reading even if it didn't make up for the woman-denigrating opening and frequent madonna/whore imagery.
I confess to being put off by the prologue, which features a religious whore being deliberately infected, but the rest of the novel is worth reading even if it didn't make up for the woman-denigrating opening and frequent madonna/whore imagery.