The Strain

The Strain is a horror novel by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, published in 2009 and the first instalment of The Strain Trilogy. It begins at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

A Boeing 777 lands and then stops on the tarmac. All of its window shades are closed except one, the lights are out and the communication channels have gone silent, which is what prompts an alert to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr Ephraim Goodweather is the head of the CDC's Canary Project, a rapid-response team that handles biological threats, and he is sent to investigate. He and Dr Nora Martinez board the aircraft and find that everybody on board is dead except four people. Four people are still alive when they get on board, which is the detail that turns the incident into something else.

Elsewhere in the city, a former history professor and Holocaust survivor named Abraham Setrakian already knows that something terrible has happened and that an unnatural war has begun. The novel was followed by The Fall and The Night Eternal.