Back in 2005 Peter May was not an unknown author, having published most of his China thriller series as well as several standalone novels, but he was certainly without the necessary clout for publishers to put into print whatever came their way from him.
And so it was that his thriller ‘Lockdown’, set in London during a pandemic, failed to make it into print and instead stayed hidden away in a bottom drawer. But this year, when the coronavirus hit, it was hastily pulled out of that drawer and has become a deserved hit 15 years on.
The book certainly shows a remarkable prescience in predicting the impact of a pandemic. But just how much did it get right – and what did it get wrong? (‘Wrong’, of course, is a slightly unfair term, given that Lockdown is a work of fiction and not necessarily intended to predict the future. But we’ll stick with it for now.) Here’s the verdict.
What it got right
(1) The general setup.
It’s a novel about an infectious respiratory virus pandemic. The virus causes “sneezing and coughing and groaning and retching”. Places are locked down, normal life is suspended, and the creation of a vaccine is key. Sound familiar?
(2) New hospitals are created.
Not Nightingale hospitals in this case, but the Dome (a.k.a. the Millennium Done and O2 Arena), which is turned into a mega-hospital with thousands of beds and no facilities for visitors. It is described as a “billion pound millennium folly for which, beyond its short life as a concert venue, they had finally found a use.”
(3) The Prime Minister gets the virus.
And just like in real life, he is treated at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. It’s not giving too much away to say that the outcome is different in the book – we find out what happened as early as page 18, and that it leads to a “power struggle between the Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer”. There’s no Deputy Prime Minister in the current Boris Johnson government, of course. But substitute ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ for ‘Minister for the Cabinet Office’ in the excerpt above, and you’ve definitely got something there.
(4) Checkpoints are in place.
In the novel, the Army sets up checkpoint across London. In the real world, Gloucestershire Police set up checkpoints along the Welsh-English border ahead of the ‘firebreak lockdown’ in Wales. Different, yes, but also the same.
(5) It’s all about the vaccine.
There’s no ‘cure’ for the virus, either in the 2005 book or in the 2020 reality, so the only way of stopping the pandemic is to find a vaccine that works. Yes, the vaccine in the book is made by a French company, and the government buys 15m doses; whereas in real life there are a number of vaccines being developed and the government has access to 335m doses (at the time of writing). But the principle is there.
What it got wrong
(1) The origins and nature of the virus.
Saying too much about the origins of the virus in ‘Lockdown’ would require a huge spoiler alert. But it’s basically a mutant version of bird flu, specifically H5N1, and has a mortality rate of 80%. In reality, coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, has – as the name suggests – more in common with the SARS outbreak of 2003/04 than it does with the H5N1 outbreak of 2008. Coronavirus also only has a mortality rate of 0.5% to 1.%.
(2) The spread of the virus.
As we know, coronavirus is believed to have originated in a seafood market in Wuhan, China, and then spread around the globe. In the book, the virus started in London, and the battle is still on to keep it contained as much as possible. But it’s not easy when, “In this modern age of air travel, we really do live in a global village.” Which leads us to……
(3) Public transport.
In ‘Lockdown’ there is no public transport – no flights, no Tube – and cars are few and far between, with our protagonist DI Jack MacNeil frequently driving around deserted streets. While transport has obviously been limited in recent months – and some air corridors between different countries have still not reopened – it’s still been largely possible to get around within the UK. Although many would suggest that the Tube should have stopped.
(4) Curfew.
“Since the curfew, nothing stirred, and if it did it would probably be shot.” That’s according to the book, and we haven’t quite reached that stage yet. (Obviously pubs have been told to close early when they’ve been allowed to open, however, and there have been restrictions placed on travel in a more general sense.)
(5) There’s no hope.
FluKill, the vaccine developed in the book, is in short supply. London is a grim place with vandalism, no-go areas, and bodies burned by the hundreds. There’s really no indication that there’s a way out of the pandemic. Whereas in the real world…..
