Red Empire: A Joe Ledger and Rogue Team International Novel

The fifth entry in Maberry’s Rogue Team International series (after Burn to Shine) is another relentless page-turner. Nicodemus, the immortal leader of the evil Red Order, has resumed his crusade against former Army ranger Joe Ledger and his team tasked with stopping global bio-threats. Accosting Ledger at the grave site of his murdered family, Nicodemus issues a cryptic warning for Ledger’s boss, Mr. Church: “Tell your lord and master he owes me, and the debt has come due.” From there, Maberry flashes back to the medieval founding of the Red Order, following Nicodemus’s Dark Ages search for an elixir granting immortality. As he subsequently spreads the Black Death across Europe, Nicodemus is pursued by the last of the Templars, a nameless, ageless knight sworn to stop him. Meanwhile, in the present, an outbreak of weaponized pneumonic plague erupts at the U.K. headquarters of Ledger’s sister team. His crew is sent to contain the disease, but the hermetically sealed skyscraper they descend on may prove to be their tomb. Series fans will devour this. (Mar.)