Unveiled

Too close for comfort

An ancient disease, a modern pandemic, and the one person who offers hope for a cure has been dead for 350 years.

If that blurb on the back of TSI: The Gabon Virus doesn’t grab your attention then this book is not for you. For the rest of us, however, this first in a series of novels written by Paul McClusker and Dr. Walt Larimore offers an exciting new genre of Christian fiction. Thirty years ago, Michael Crichton warned of the potential for a deadly man-made pandemic devastating the planet in The Andromeda Strain. The Gabon Virus builds on that premise but raises the stakes in its introduction of eco-terrorists intent on not just taking the earth back to the stone age but in eliminating the human race altogether.

Though this is a big story taking place on three continents with a large cast of characters the authors do a good job of focusing on a couple of story-lines that are intensely personal and compelling. Dr. Mark Carlson has just joined the Time Scene Investigators after losing his own child to a deadly disease and his inner turmoil threatens to hamper his ability to contribute an answer to a raging epidemic of Ebola in Gabon, Africa. In Gabon, a lone teenage boy runs for his life from the horrors he witnessed in his family’s religious compound not realizing he is a carrier of the disease. And, an American general has issued a kill on site order to stop the boy not realizing the target is his own grandson.

Throw into the mix, a village in England with a graveyard full of black-death victims from the 1600’s and a local legend named the Blue Monk, and you have the makings of a great story. While one boy in Africa may unwittingly threaten death to millions, the body of a long dead monk in England may hold the key to the cure. The authors have revealed another in this series will appear in the near future following the exploits of the Time Scene Investigators to Siberia as they seek to thwart the madness of the Return to Earth eco-terrorists. That is good news. At least we can all sleep soundly until then.