Marr, John S
Entry updated 2 March 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1940- ) US doctor, epidemiologist and author whose official positions have included Director of the New York City Bureau of Communicable Diseases and State Epidemiologist of Virginia (retired 2006). His medical expertise fuelled the Disaster thriller The Black Death (1977) with Gwyneth Cravens, centred on an outbreak of pneumonic plague in New York, and the race to track down and treat all those potentially infected in order to prevent escalation to a Pandemic. This was filmed as the made-for-television Quiet Killer (1992; vt Black Death) directed by Sheldon Larry.
A second novel, The Eleventh Plague (1998) with John Baldwin (1944- ), has a more baroque and less plausible plot whose virologist hero is pitted against a Mad Scientist determined to release updated versions of biblical plagues. Both virologist and scientist return in the solo sequel Wormwood (2008 ebook), with the latter – madder than ever – murdering imagined foes with tailored parasites (see Parasitism and Symbiosis), a subject on which Marr has published a serious nonfiction study. Wormwood seems to have first appeared in German translation as Die achte Posaune ["The Eighth Trumpet"] (2002), referring like the English title to the Bible's book Revelation.
Marr has also written a series of nonfantastic mysteries for Young Adult readers, not listed below. [DRL]
John Stuart Marr
born New York: 22 April 1940
works (highly selected)
series
The Eleventh Plague
- The Eleventh Plague (New York: HarperCollins/Cliff Street, 1998) with John Baldwin [The Eleventh Plague: hb/Marc Burckhardt]
- Die achte Posaune ["The Eighth Trumpet"] (Cologne, Germany: Bastei Lübbe, 2002) [trans of the book below: The Eleventh Plague: binding unknown/]
- Wormwood (place not known: Frog City West, 2008) [ebook: The Eleventh Plague: na/]
individual titles
- The Black Death (New York: E P Dutton, 1977) with Gwyneth Cravens [hb/]
links
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