Book Review: Cold Storage by David Koepp

 

Cold Storage by David Koepp

308 pages, Hardcover 

Published by Harper  September 2019

I just read and reviewed Koepp’s second novel Aurora a month ago so I apologize for repeating much of my David Koepp thoughts and history. I read these two books out of order and I think that was a bit of a mistake as I think there was a natural increase in ability between freshman and sophomore efforts. David Koepp is a respected screenwriter, and one of my favorites but somehow remains underrated.  How can a writer who is responsible for some of the high-grossest movies of all time be underrated? The thing is when you write scripts for Spielberg (Jurassic Park & War of the Worlds), David Fincher (Panic Room), Brian Depalma (Snake Eyes), Steven Soderberg (Kimi), and Rami (Spider-man) the writer is not really the one who gets the credit or is remembered.

That said David Koepp is a favorite of mine not because of those scripts, although I am a huge fan of Panic Room which is a masterclass in building suspense and tension. It is the underrated movies that Koepp has written and directed. Stir of Echoes is a masterpiece full stop.

What makes Koepp great are dozens of tiny details that build suspense. As I said in my Aurora review and is worth repeating …Koepp is always thinking about how character moments can build out the story and keep the audience/reader nervous. Koepp keeps you just slightly ahead of the character, like that moment when you are about to stub your toe but it is too late to avoid it. The Koepp story exists in a gasp before impact.

It is exciting that Koepp, after writing some of the highest-grossest movies ever, chose to write a novel. When I first saw this announced I was excited but I wondered why Koepp choose to write a novel instead of writing a screenplay. Having read it, now I see this would be a complicated story to write as spec. Koepp’s films, while done well are limited in scope probably for budget and production reasons.

I get the sense that Koepp wanted to tell this story and not think about those realities. You will see lots of comparisons to Andromeda Strain and I think that influence is clear. More accidentally, the thinking plague is something of a theme in Blood Music by Greg Bear a novella that was expanded into a novel in the 80s. I am reading that book (right now) in part because Bear died this week and I wanted to read that novel that many consider a masterpiece.

The comparisons between Blood Music and Cold Storage are largely thematic but very different stories. Both involve an aware virus, one of the creepiest things about Cold Storage is a fungus that thinks about spreading, and once it is in a host it tries to spread. It is a killer concept for a Science Fiction horror, techno-thriller…all things this could be marketed as.

I don’t know if this book sold well or not. I didn’t hear much buzz, I found it and read it because I am a Koepp fan who will follow him to any project. It was oddly marketed without any thought to the genre. I think they missed out on genre readers. The blurbs mention it being a thriller, and a couple focuses on humor, something I didn't feel much of. It was marketed to readers of Andy Weir and Noah Hawley when honestly it feels more solidly horror.

OK…the deer taking the elevator. We will come back to that…

Cold Storage’s comparison to Andromeda Strain starts with the inciting events of the novel. I believe Skylab really did crash in Australia in 1979, but in this novel Cordyceps Novus, a fungus sent into space on Skylab mutates into a cosmic bacteria that has more in common with the alien in The Thing than a pizza topping. It has an astonishing growth rate because it thinks and wants to grow. The fungus later takes out an Outback town, before being contained. For a few decades, it remains that way until it accidently unearths and sets events in motion that combine The Crazies with  The Thing. The main character Roberto Diaz has had a plan for this for decades, hoped he would never have to deal with this ultimate plague. That said much of the action involves Storage unit security guard  Teacake and Naomi, they are fun characters and have an interesting dynamic.

The narrative is strange, and it might have to do with his position but Koepp breaks a few rules most editors don’t allow writers to get away with. The POV changes at a whim sometimes from one paragraph to the next. It is the one thing I didn’t like and that took me out of the story and confused me a couple of times. That said the prose is fine-tuned as you expect from Koepp to build the horror elements.  I was surprised at how horror it was. Honestly, this novel is as horror as anything by Brian Keene. Once the virus is out exposure would be enough to make things suspenseful but this virus wants to grow, to infect. There are plenty of moments when the characters, the humans lose control and their thoughts are controlled by the fungus but smartly Koepp slowly releases that information.

The infected deer acting unlike a deer created some of the freaky weird moments… being murdered, resurrection, and riding an elevator—also some interesting commentary.

“...and that dumbass deer—sorry, that beautiful creature of God—that thing’s character was drawn within the limitations of a non-sentient brain. It stood there, unmoving, as the car closed the last fifty feet on it; it just hunched there, watching Death come hurtling at it, staring at the car like, well, like exactly what it was, there’s a goddamn good reason for that cliché, so maybe it was fitting that the first thing that hit the deer was the headlight.”  

Koepp always uses tools, or environmental factors to increase dread, one of my favorite moments involved the use of night vision goggles.

“He was still wearing the thermal imaging goggles, and he could see the dense thick amount of fungus on the dead man’s body was very much alive and quite industrious. The churning ooze was already moving off the corpse to explore the environment.”

Cold Storage is a great and very effective horror novel. I am a little more impressed by Koepp's second novel Aurora, but this is a solid effort. There is nothing revolutionary, or mind bending but it is super entertaining. I recommend this novel for horror fans looking for a great disaster novel and stuff that evolves the zombie genre like the Hissers novels or Skipp and Spector’s The Bridge. Overall Big thumbs up.