Ed's Mini Book Review - The King of Plagues (A Joe Ledger Novel)

Book three from Jonathan Mayberry starring Counter-terrorism agent extraordinaire , Joe Ledger, brings the series back to the roots of the first book in the series, Patient Zero. I was having a discussion about Joe Ledger books with a friend of mine, who was the one that turned me onto Patient Zero, and she said that she wasn't going to pick up The King of Plagues because she couldn't stand The Dragon Factory. I liked The Dragon Factory as it was more of an actioner, but I agree with her that it didn't have the same feel as Patient Zero.

The King of Plagues recaptures that Patient Zero feel and I think a good part of recapturing that feel is the return of some characters from the first book that I won't give away but it made me cheer a bit inside to see them back. Another way this brings things back is the plot of of our dastardly villains this go around, we are back to bio-terror. Sure you could say that the last one was bio-terror in that there were bio-engineered thingies (a pure technical term) but this is the stuff that strikes a cord with people today, the viral threat.

To complete the feel of the first book, we get Joe Ledger kicking ass, which to be fair, he did a lot of in The Dragon Factory. My main gripe with the last book was that the DMS was sort of reactionary, basically stumbling in the right direction and here we get the DMS being pro-active in seeing through leads and solving some mysteries to drive them in the case. There was a little bit too much lamenting some of the things that happened in the last book for my liking as I like books that can stand on their own and not need the previous to know what's going on and that is the case in this book. Also the references to the first book with some of the background on returning characters may turn new readers off and they may feel that they don't know fully what is going on. If you are a dedicated reader of the series, though, you should be in good shape and I think that The King of Plagues will have you looking forward to more Joe Ledger books.

My Grade: B+

LL