"The Rapture" is set in the very near future : although the London Olympics have been and gone, they're still recent history. Climate change has proven to be neither a myth, nor a smear campaign against the oil industry. The ice-caps are unquestionably disappearing, rivers are starting to dry up while the heatwave on mainland Europe has filled the morgues to bursting point. People are searching for alternative fuel sources, while the Americans and the Chinese continue to argue about greenhouse gas emissions. Large groups of people are being pushed to extremes : some have "joined" the Faith Wave, a group of religious fundamentalists, while others have sided with the Planetarians, a movement comprised of Eco-dingbats. (The Faith Wavers are delighted, believing the Apocalypse is on its way. Certain they're God's chosen people, they're believe they'll be zapped skywards. The Antichrist, meanwhile, takes over the Earth and the sinners left behind will suffer seven years of Tribulation. The Planetarians, led by Harish Modak, agree that the human race is on its last legs - but that it's nothing to do with God, and everything to do with how people have damaged the environment. They figure the health of the planet is the important thing and that humans are just another irrelevant little species).

The story, however, doesn't really deal with the global movements. It's told by Gabrielle Fox - a psychologist and an art therapist in her mid-thirties - whose difficulties extend beyond the rising temperatures and pollution. Her mother is dead, her father has Alzheimer's while Gabrielle herself has been wheelchair bound for eighteen months. (She was injured in a car accident that also saw her lover die). Gabrielle has had a lot of trouble dealing with her post-accident life and has been told that, if she ever wanted to work at senior levels in London again, she'd have to deal with her "issues". (These issues appear to centre on what she views as her "diminished status as a human being" - something that would involve more intensive therapy). As she sees it, her work is now the only thing she has left - and has managed to find herself a new job - in Hadport, on the English south coast, close to the Channel Tunnel.

Gabrielle new job is, initially, a six month contract at the Oxsmith Adolescent Secure Hospital - home to around a hundred of the country's most dangerous teenagers. She'll be filling in for Joy McConey, who is officially on a sabbatical but seems to have left in disgrace. Gabrielle's new colleagues tend to steer the conversation away from her predecessor. In one case, her notes have even been removed from Bethany Krall's file - a sixteen year old patient who stabbed her mother to death with a screwdriver two years previously. (Bethany's parents were both Faith Wavers. Her father, who's still alive, is a noted preacher and refuses to visit Bethany : he believes she's possessed by the devil. It's pretty safe to assume that Bethany no longer shares her parents' religious views). Bethany isn't going to be an easy case and, since nobody else at Oxsmith will accept her, she's essentially been dumped on Gabrielle. Although small and underdeveloped, she's aggressive, intelligent and manipulative - and her words can wound every bit as much as her fists. She claims to have no memory of the murder and has attempted suicide four times at the hospital. No standard treatments have worked - though there has been some improvement since the staff, as a last resort, started a course of ECT. There's been a strange side-effect, though : Bethany has started having visions of natural disasters - earthquakes in Istanbul and hurricanes in Brazil. Unsurprisingly, Gabrielle becomes more and more troubled when Bethany's visions start coming true - on the exact date she predicts. So when she starts talking about "the big one" and "the tribulation" arriving on the 12th of October, things start looking a little sticky...

This is a hugely enjoyable book - it moves along at a great pace, and the environmental disasters add a genuinely believable and scary element to the book. (I'd only finished it a couple of days before an ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano closed airports across Europe for several days). Gabrielle is a very well developed character and is someone you can't help worrying about. She gives herself a very hard time and her sense of humour can be quite caustic. Bethany (joyfully) gives her one verbal bashing after another - she's nicknamed "Wheels" shortly after they first meet - though they (more or less) grow to care for each other. Absolutely recommended : comfortably the best thriller I've read in a very long time.

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Aiming to release this at the Convention tomorrow.

Oops! I must had to forget to journaled this one, I´m sorry!
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