It is far too early in the new year to be picking the worst novel of 1961, yet ["Epidemic!", a] loco melodrama about Communists exploiting the bubonic plague in New York encourages one to be bold. Probably nothing less calamitous than the plague could put a dent in Frank G. Slaughter's own following….

The riddle of how he does it is only deepened by "Epidemic!"—a novel of excruciating dullness. As the malarkey begins, a freighter—boarded by plague-bearing rats in the Cameroons—steams into New York in the midst of a garbagemen's strike instigated by agents of a foreign power ("you-know-who"). The rats are helped out by a Spanish-speaking youth gang—under the same auspices—which goes around blowing up power plants. Holding up the good-guy end against all the fiendishness are a pair of noble doctors and a noble nurse, who furnish the excuse for Slaughter to...