The Strain is a 2009 vampire horror novel by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. It is the first installment in The Strain Trilogy, and was followed by The Fall (2010) and The Night Eternal (2011).
Plot synopsis
A Boeing 777 arrives at John F. Kennedy International Airport and is taxiing its way across the tarmac when it suddenly stops. All window shades are closed except one, the lights are out, and communication channels have gone silent. An alert is sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Ephraim "Eph" Goodweather, head of the CDC's Canary Project, a rapid-response team that handles biological threats, is sent to investigate. Goodweather and Dr. Nora Martinez board the plane, finding everyone except four people dead.
In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, former history professor and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian knows something terrible has happened and that an unnatural war is brewing. So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected the passengers begins spilling out onto New York City's streets. Dr. Goodweather, who is joined by Setrakian and a small band of fighters, desperately tries to stop the contagion to save the city, and also his wife and son.
Characters
Dr. Ephraim Goodweather
Head of the CDC's rapid-response team, the Canary Project, Eph is a newly-divorced father attempting to balance the custody battle over his son Zack with his duties as an epidemiologist. He and his Canary team are the first response team to the Boeing 777 disaster, and are tasked with solving the mystery of the mass casualties. Unable to reconcile the symptoms of the newly-infected airline passengers with standard disease pathology, Eph is convinced of the reality of vampires by Abraham Setrakian. Discredited at the CDC by the vampires' human conspirators, Eph finds himself a fugitive from both the human authorities and the undead. The need to protect his son drives Eph's every action.
In the television series, he is played by Corey Stoll.
Dr. Nora Martinez
A skilled epidemiologist, Nora is second-in-command of the Canary Project. She and Eph have been attempting an office romance with mixed success, complicated by their high-stress medical careers and Goodweather's lingering melancholy over his looming divorce. Nora quickly dedicates herself to uncovering the vampire conspiracy, and is determined not to be relegated to doing the "woman's work."
In the television series, she is played by Mía Maestro.
Professor Abraham Setrakian
A Romanian Jew (partly of Armenian descent), Setrakian was held in the Treblinka extermination camp during the Second World War, where he became aware of the Master feeding on the weak and sickly inmates. His first attempt to stop the Master was a failure, leaving him with multiple fractures in his hands that never healed properly. After escaping from the camp, he dedicated his life to hunting down the vampiric scourge for more than six decades. Originally a professor of East European literature and mythology at the University of Vienna, Setrakian was dismissed and forced to go into hiding after refusing to help Eldritch Palmer locate the Master. Wielding an ancient silver sword in his nearly crippled hands, Setrakian is an expert on vampire biology and destruction, and recruits Eph and Nora to his cause. His determination and will are strong, but his weak heart has become an obstacle to his lifelong quest.
In the television series, he is played by David Bradley, and by Jim Watson as a young man.
The Master
One of the seven original "Ancients", the propagators of the vampire race, the Master scorns the truce between the six others and intends to eliminate their strains and subjugate the entire human race. By the time of his arrival in New York, having spent nearly a millennium in Europe in various host bodies, the Master currently inhabits the body of Jusef Sardu, a 19th-century Polish nobleman afflicted with gigantism. Through the cooperation of Eldritch Palmer, promising the dying billionaire immortality, the Master has gained unlimited financial and political power to ensure the success of his plan.
In the television series, the Master is voiced by Robin Atkin Downes with Jusef Sardu portrayed by Robert Maillet. The Master's second host Gabriel Bolivar is played by Jack Kesy.
Thomas Eichorst
The Master's chief facilitator. He was a Nazi SS officer at a concentration camp whom the Master mutated into a Strigoi, a Renfield-type character but immortal. He killed Setrakian's wife in the past.
In the television series, he is played by Richard Sammel.