Review by Karl Verhoven
The Panic takes as its topic something surely considered at some point by everyone who uses an underground transit system. Suppose something went wrong and you were trapped underground with everyone in your carriage? At first you’d get to know them, and once there was some basic trust you’d combine to find a way out, right? That’s not the path Neil Kleid’s thriller follows.
As would be the case in reality, the people in the carriage are a cross section of society with an assortment of views, and Kleid setting The Panic during the tail end of the covid plague is a clever way of magnifying differences via an external factor. It’s a brew that ought to gel, but never does because there’s no sense of reality. If you were trapped underground and needed to find a way to the surface, would your primary concern be that one of your fellow passengers was wearing a MAGA cap? Or that they didn’t give proper respect to the idea of women being capable? In his afterword Kleid talks about “emotionally navigating the moment after something terrible happens”, but his presentation is tailored far more toward the “reality” TV show idea of gathering a group of people designed to generate internal conflict. Isn’t the idea of people trapped underground enough?
These aren’t Kleid’s only irritating writing habits. There’s the use of swear words in large font to emphasise the seriousness of a situation, and smug dialogue. When a policeman turns up he introduces himself with “Lincoln McNeil NYPD. Here to help”, which is fine, but then follows up with “You know, in case the uniform made you forget”. Not only does it not make sense, as it should surely be “in case you forgot the uniform”, but it’s a line no-one would say, and there’s no shortage of other examples. Of course, it can be asked how realistic the surrounding circumstances are, but the writer’s trick should be to gloss over that by making everything else as realistic as possible.
Andrea Mutti does do that, using an appealing loose style of art. He has to fudge the lack of light underground slightly in order that we can actually identify people, but keeps them distinct in the darkness and poses them into personalities. The red highlight of the MAGA cap is a good touch, in colours otherwise kept few and simple.
Irritation with the writing disguises a viable concept, and Kleid doubles down on that via eventually supplying a good reason for the train being trapped. Overall, though, The Panic is fatally flawed.
