KINGDOM OF BONES

A plague threatens to burst from the Congolese jungle and infect the world in the latest bloodcurdling adventure in the Sigma Force series.

“Stay away. Dear God, don’t come out here”: That's the warning ignored by Sigma Force’s Tucker Wayne and his faithful soldier dog, Kane. Near Kisangani, “the literal heart of Africa,” a fearful contagion runs amok. Scientists and locals suffer attacks from crazed ants, bats, and myriad other jungle fauna. Some of the populace becomes nearly catatonic—what’s going on? The answer appears to be viruses, those half-living creatures said to outnumber all the stars in the universe. An infected moth lands on skin with bloodcurdling effect. Baboons go crazy and tear people apart. Ants develop spikes, as though their mandibles aren’t enough for ripping into flesh. The normally cranky hippos are even crankier. And “the deeper we go, the worse it will get.” The evil mining CEO Nolan De Coster loves all of this—he wants a massive pandemic in which he can become the savior, but he’s not all the good guys have to worry about. Even the flora fight them. They encounter intelligent fungi and angry trees as they get closer and closer to Mfupa Ufalme, the accursed Kingdom of Bones. Thriller readers love ticking clocks, and this yarn has several, like the timer on the mother of all bombs that is going to explode any minute now. The story is a well-mixed blend of action, science, and occasionally over-the-top imagination. That bats are “furry sacks of viruses” is an easy sell—judgmental trees, not so much. Readers will like the characters, especially the brave Kane and Benjamin Frey, the biologist with an eidetic memory and mild Asperger’s. This excursion into the depths of Africa is more enjoyable than Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, although it gets a little gross in spots.

This one’s fast-moving fun.