The Doomsday Key

April 27, 2009
Bestseller Rollins's labyrinthine sixth Sigma Force thriller (after The Last Oracle
) offers plenty of intriguing science and history lessons. Sigma Force director Painter Crowe gathers the usual crew—Cmdr. Grayson Pierce; Pierce's best friend, Monk Kokkalis; lumbering Joe Kowalski—to discover why an experimental agriculture site in Africa has been attacked and razed, killing everyone, including a U.S. senator's son. “The future of mankind” may depend, they learn, on the “Doomsday key,” a strange substance brought to England long ago by ancient Egyptians that holds the promise of a new and powerful medicine. A few of the book's many highlights include genetic manipulation, traitorous beautiful women, illuminated manuscripts, saints, prophecies, curses and miracles. Rollins deftly juggles all this and more as the Sigma team races from the depths of the Vatican to the outer reaches of Norway toward an explosive confrontation with the shadowy forces of evil known as the Guild.

August 31, 2009
Rollins takes fans on a frenetic roller-coaster ride through the streets of Rome, across England and into Norway. The Sigma Force is in a race to find a link between a nearly 1,000-year-old mystery and a modern conspiracy that could cause the starvation of billions of humans. Comdr. Gray Pierce leads a team that includes his former lover and his current enemy, getting them to work together to save each other's lives long enough to save the world. Peter Jay Fernandez serves up an entertaining gravelly Scottish brogue and a plausible Norwegian accent and gives every character his or her own distinctive voice, allowing easy identification by using inflection and cadence. He keeps listeners involved through lengthy descriptive passages, convoluted scientific explanations and historical fact and speculation, and does well at raising the tension as the narrative escalates into explosive, action-packed scenes. A Morrow hardcover (Reviews, Apr. 27).