The murder of what appears to be a homeless man propels the Sigma Force (The Judas Strain ) into their most compelling and perilous adventure yet. The victim is a respected scientist, and the Sigma Force finds that his research leads to a rogue organization of scientists called the Jasons. This think tank of intellectual geniuses has developed a method to augment autistic children with special savant talents. The outcome, in the hands of several men bent on their own quest for control, threatens the entire world. Sigma Force must send their best men to India and other countries around the globe to track down the murdered scientist's research. But menace hides close to their base of operations. Rollins has outdone himself with this fabulous mix of history, science, and adventure that will easily increase his growing number of fans. For all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/08.]—Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L.

At the start of bestseller Rollins's rousing fifth Sigma Force novel (after The Judas Strain ), the group's leader, Cmdr. Gray Pierce, encounters a homeless man as he's crossing the Mall in Washington, D.C., near Sigma Force's secret lair far beneath the Smithsonian Castle. The man, who's really an MIT neurology professor, collapses in Pierce's arms and dies after passing him a strange coin, thus kicking off a far-flung adventure whose plot threads include the Oracle of Delphi, autistic savant children with strange implants behind their ears, Gypsies, power-mad Russians bent on unleashing enough radioactivity to poison the world, rogue American spy agencies and genetically enhanced wolves and tigers. Lots of absorbing scientific information and tantalizing sentences like "With two rifles strapped to his back and a boy and a chimpanzee in tow, Monk marched down the pitch-black tunnel" keep the pages flying by. 10-city author tour. (July)