cover image The Seventh Plague: A Sigma Force Novel

The Seventh Plague: A Sigma Force Novel

James Rollins. Morrow, $27.99 (448p) ISBN 978-0-06-238168-2

Bestseller Rollins’s epic 12th Sigma Force adventure (after The Bone Labyrinth) features exotic locales, heroic quests, quixotic villains, action galore, and enough science and scientific curiosities to titillate even casual readers. Archeologist Harold McCabe, who has been missing for two years, suddenly emerges from the Egyptian desert near death and dies before being able to say where he has been and what has happened. McCabe’s body seems to be the source of a deadly pathogen that threatens to cause a pandemic. That thread sends one team—including McCabe’s daughter, Jean McCabe; bio-archaeologist Derek Rankin; and Sigma Force’s operative named Seichan and Commander Grayson Pierce—to Egypt and Sudan. Meanwhile, Safia al-Maaz, a senior curator at the British Museum, is kidnapped while speaking with Sigma Force director Painter Crowe in Washington, D.C., and Painter follows that line, which leads to the Arctic and a huge installation run by billionaire Simon Hartnell. A Russian assassin, Valya Mikhailov, matches skills and wits with Seichan, while Valya’s assassin twin brother, Anton, does likewise with Crowe. Rollins’s characters are as large as his landscape in this vast and vastly entertaining thriller saga. Agents: Russ Galen, Scovil Galen Ghost Literary Agency; and Danny Baror, Baror International. (Dec.)