This very complex and circuitous story. It took me eighteen (18) days to read this book and that is about twelve (12) days too long for any book. The problem was not so much with the story as a whole, but that there just seemed to be almost too much going on. There were wars, conspiracies, secret societies, romance, intrigue, and a host of other things. The characters were all good and I was happy to get to know them. I became very invested in the bulk of the characters, and there were quite a few of them. It was kind of hard keeping track sometimes though because there are so many twists in relation to the characters and the situations which change on a dime.

A mysterious outbreak starts to spread across Kenya and the CDC and WHO respond but are unprepared for what they find. A submarine with no identification markings is found sunken one hundred miles north of Alaska with evidence of scientific experiments having been performed there. Dr. Peyton Shaw is deployed to Kenya from the CDC to help trace the pathogen, as she does she starts to believe the outbreak may be a part of a larger plan. Desmond Hughes wakes up in a Berlin Hotel with a dead man and no memory of who he is, but a clue leads him to Peyton Shaw who knows him but will not tell him how. All this and more.

While I liked the book there were a few things that made me a little crazy. While I appreciate the fact that the book was well researched I don’t think every bit of that research needed to go into this one book, particularly since it is the beginning of a series. The thing was 137 chapters long, I hate having to go through that many when some are only a paragraph long. Though it may only be me, I do not think Disco music was around in 1965, even in Hong Kong. The thing that I did like a lot was that things tied up well for all the roundabout that went on.

I would recommend this but warn you to be prepared for a lot of information. If you like medical thrillers this may work for you.

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars