The Seventh Plague

by James Rollins
425 pgs  (Sigma series #12)

In his latest Sigma Force book, James Rollins unleashes a biblical plague in the modern world. It begins  when Professor Harold McCabe, who has spent his entire career trying to find archaeological evidence of the plagues mentioned in Exodus, stumbles out of the Sudanese desert and dies before he can tell his story. It appears that someone had begun the mummification process on Professor McCabe before he died, and when those who performed his autopsy soon become ill, Painter Crowe and his team at Sigma Force are called in to discover the cause of the illness and to try to prevent it from spreading.

It wouldn’t be a James Rollins book though, if things were as simple as trying to prevent a few people from dying of a new disease. He doesn’t write a book that doesn’t bring the world’s population perilously close to annihilation. The pathogen which is discovered is airborne and highly-contagious, and as Crowe, Gray, Monk, and the rest of the team soon realize, this might not be the first time it was unleashed on the world. They trace its origin back to a vial of red water collected from the Nile River thousands of years ago…right around the time the Bible says the river was turned to blood.

I’m starting to consider Rollins’ books one of my guilty pleasures. I know they’re over-the-top with their plots and usually require a suspension of belief, but they’re always interesting and fun. They combine historical fiction with outlandish cutting-edge technology and then mix in some addictive action sequences. They’re summer reads which consistently deliver, and this one is no exception.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆