Plague Maker by Tim Downs
The book starts off with a bang, and then the bangs keep happening right up until the end. Once reading, I was hooked and sailed through to the end.
Nathan Donovan is an ex-Marine, an FBI agent, and a failed father with the body of Mr. Incredible. Following his failure, Nathan is on shut-down mode. The reckless courage makes him a great agent, but a lousy person.
Macy Monroe is a pretty but somewhat reserved professor and terrorist expert who gets called in to help the FBI discover whether an old man's story is something to be worried about or not. She's fascinated by the story, but not too thrilled with who she has to work with.
Mr. Li is a British citizen of Chinese extraction who has been looking for 60 years for the man who turned his life upside down. Li has an agenda, and everyone assumes they know what it is, so they keep him "humored" for as long as they can use him. He may be using them, though.
And finally, there's Matsushita Sato, a research scientist who performed unspeakable acts while testing and perfecting methods of biological terror for the Japanese. For sixty years he's been planning revenge for the death of his sister and America's forthcoming birthday looks like the perfect opportunity.
The Writing
The writing is fast-paced without becoming too simple. Even when Mr. Li comes dangerously close to monologuing (I can't get past the Mr. Incredible idea), the reader is drawn right along with him.
Now, how does one write a book this predictable and still make it entertaining? Because it's not exactly predictable. I started to write that the book becomes predictable as it goes along, but that's not accurate because predicting that you're in for a twist is not the same as predicting what the twist will be.
On the other hand, I figured out where the book was going about 140 pages before the end. Like the first time on a roller-coaster, though, just because you know where you're going to end up doesn't necessarily take the edge off the ride. And, the fact that I figured out where this book was going may owe more to my own Christian worldview than to any deficiency on the author's part. Of course, it's also possible that he pulled an Agatha Christie on me and put this clue in there for anyone to find (and maybe there were earlier ones that I missed) on purpose.
Spiritual Content
Some readers, especially those who pick up this book seeing the publisher (West Bow, a division of Thomas Nelson), may go in expecting an evangelizing Christian novel. They're going to be surprised. There is a powerful Christian message in this book—and it is Christian, not just generically positive—but it's the theme of the book, not the individual parts. Rather like one of those photomosaic things where the individual pictures add up to a sum you might not have expected, in this book we get all the little pictures and it's not until it's put together that you see how they have been assembled, and why.
