Saturday, March 12, 2011

The King of Plagues-Jonathan Maberry

The King of Plagues
Jonathan Maberry
St. Martin’s Griffin, Mar 29 2011, $14.99
ISBN: 9780312382506

The blast at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel left thousands dead and many more injured. One hour after the deadly explosion, retired Department of Military Science agent Joe Ledger arrives to investigate the carnage caused by the terrorist attack and un-retires in a rage at the lunatics who caused this horrific violence. Not long afterward, Joe and his team are attacked by assassins of the Seven Kings who plan to rule the world with iron fists.

In Fair Isle in the Shetlands, a viral research facility is breached releasing Ebola. As other terrorist attacks raise the death toll around the world, Joe knows nothing about the Seven Kings except they seem to have much more resources than the nations of the world as this group uses modern weapons to release the Ten Plagues of the Old Testament to destroy the global economy.

The third Ledger case (see Patient Zero and The Dragon Factory) is a great action thriller that grips the audience from the opening sequence and never loses the reader's attention until the final explosive confrontation. Clearly over the top of the Wall Street-German merged exchange, the London Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange combined; fans will relish this fast-paced modernizing of the Passover plagues. Jonathon Maberry satirizes the stock exchange-military-religious complex; as Joe learns politicians and other world rulers are expendable purchases on a ledger sheet.

Harriet Klausner

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