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In the third thriller featuring Winston Sage, the former physician/epidemiologist joins a task force looking at a probable agro-terrorist plot in the U.S.

FBI Agent Dan Tilikso interrupts Win’s retirement in Santa Fe with a call to ask for his assistance. Having previously worked with Tilikso on a bioterrorist attack, Win flies to Washington, D.C., to help deal with an apparent threat to American agribusiness. He and other members of the Agro-terrorism Task Force scrutinize four recent cases of an “extremely rare” variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Since the victims’ exposure likely occurred at least a decade earlier and no additional cases have surfaced, Win determines the variant CJD was someone’s trial run. Meanwhile, a terrorist group is planning an economic strike against U.S. agriculture. It’s propagating various infectious agents via livestock on a Yemen farm while American-born jihadi pilots will initiate the “spraying program” to infect U.S. wheat fields. Aiding the group is Abdullah, a Pakistani with ties to the variant CJD cases. He, however, has animosity for the Brits; as a British citizen, he’s reportedly faced discrimination against people of color. While Win tries to determine the terrorists’ point of attack, the task force learns about Abdullah and realizes the U.K. may be in danger of his lethal vengeance. As in preceding installments like The Bag Boys’ Jihad (2018), Grufferman favors short scenes and chapters that help to keep his story moving briskly. Entailing myriad debates on strategy from both the good guys and bad, the narrative favors dialogue over description. The story is nevertheless consistently enthralling, giving ample space to the villains’ unnerving perspective, including a growing distrust of Abdullah—not a true believer—that could lead to his murder. Though Win occasionally sits out the narrative for villaincentric and England-set sequences, he remains a worthy hero for his deductive reasoning. Even his argument against immediately suspecting terrorism is sound, though readers are already aware of terrorist involvement.

A fast-paced series entry with an exemplary protagonist.