The Seventh Plague: A Sigma Force Novel (Sigma Force, #12)

by James Rollins

"Fans of Clive Cussler, Steve Berry, and Michael Crichton should...have Rollins on their mandatory reading list." -Booklist ("Starred Review") Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, the leader of a British archaeological expedition, Professor Harold McCabe, stumbles out of the sands, frantic and delirious, but he dies before he can tell his story. The mystery deepens when an autopsy uncovers that someone had begun to mummify the professor's body-while he was still alive. When his remains are returned to London for further study, alarming news arrives from Egypt. The medical team who had performed the man's autopsy has fallen ill with an unknown disease that is quickly spreading throughout Cairo. Fearing the worst, a colleague of the professor reaches out to Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force. It appears that Professor McCabe had vanished into the desert while searching for proof of the ten plagues of Moses. As the pandemic grows, a disturbing question arises. Are those plagues starting again? Then a mysterious group of assassins leaves behind a fiery wake of destruction and death, erasing all evidence.
Sigma Force turns to the archaeologist's daughter, Jane McCabe, for help. She discovers a puzzling connection to a shocking historical mystery that involves the travels of Mark Twain, the genius of Nikola Tesla, and the adventures of explorer Henry Morton Stanley. Now Sigma Force must confront a danger that will unleash a cascading series of plagues, culminating in a scourge that could kill all of the world's children ...decimating humankind forever. "[Rollins is] what you might end up with if you tossed Michael Crichton and Dan Brown into a particle accelerator together." -New York Times Book Review on The Bone Labyrinth

• ISBN10: 0062381695
• ISBN13: 9780062381699
• Publish Date: 7 September 2017 (first published 13 December 2016)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: William Morrow
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 640
• Language: English

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Like Riding A Bike. It had been quite a while - and a few *thousand* books - since I read the prior book in this series. In the intervening years, I've started a few different bookish projects, begun reviewing every book I read, and even met Mr. Rollins himself a few years ago, just before the insanities took over the world. And yet coming back into the world of Sigma Force, to pick up here with Book 12 as I gear up to read an Advance Reviewer Copy of the upcoming Book 17, Tides of Fire, was truly like riding a bike. Even across all the years and all the books, Rollins told enough of the backstory here for me to be able to remember what was going on in this world - without rehashing every minor detail. For example, he would mention Monk's prosthetic hand... without going into the details of that mission (book) and how he lost it. So this made it quite easy indeed to get into the groove of this particular book... and boy, what a book.

There have been several various scifi tales over the years seeking to explain some or all of the Plagues of Moses, and yet Rollins here manages to do it in a way I'd never seen before, while incorporating several other wide ranging myths and techs as well... as Rollins does. So while the driving force is the Plagues of Moses (and one of them in particular), we also see Nikola Tesla and some of the mysteries around his life. We see the mystery of the elephant graveyard. We even get appearances from both David Livingstone *and* Mark Twain. And cutting edge discoveries such as a strange new class of bacteria.

All rolled up into one action packed, near balls to the wall, globe trotting adventure trying to save the world before the forces of... well, misguidedness, let's call it in this case... can try to destroy it in their hubris.

Truly a fun read, and one I'm glad I've come back to after all these years. Very much recommended.