Judas virus

Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — The Judas Virus by D. The Judas Virus by D. Goldberg It was a miracle-until a killer turned it into a weapon.

When Dr. Chris Collins's estranged father, Wayne, shows up needing a liver transplant to save his life, Chris balks at donating even a piece of a vital organ to the man who walked out on her twenty-nine year "A fast-paced medical mystery with believable characters and plenty of twists and turns. Chris Collins's estranged father, Wayne, shows up needing a liver transplant to save his life, Chris balks at donating even a piece of a vital organ to the man who walked out on her twenty-nine years ago.

Neither can she just let her father die. She contacts Dr. Michael Boyer's experimental transplant program. The surgery is risky, and the source of the donor liver shocking. Without other options, Wayne grabs the chance that might save his life. Any celebration of Wayne's stunning recovery is cut short when two of the nurses on the transplant team suddenly die horrifying, painful deaths. As Chris and Michael Boyer search desperately for answers, a potential epidemic worse than any the world has ever experienced gains momentum.

If the virus doesn't kill them first, its creator will. Don holds a Ph. In his professional career, he has taught microscopic anatomy to over 5, medical and dental students and published dozens of research papers on wound healing. He is also the author of seven published forensic mysteries and five medical thrillers. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee with his wife and two West Highland terriers.

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To ask other readers questions about The Judas Virus , please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list ». Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. New York Times bestselling author James Rollins returns with a terrifying story of an ancient menace reborn to plague the modern world. A scientific term for an organism that drives an entire species to extinction. From the depths of the New York Times bestselling author James Rollins returns with a terrifying story of an ancient menace reborn to plague the modern world.

Get A Copy. Hardcover , pages. More Details Original Title. Sigma Force 4. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Judas Strain , please sign up.

Do I have to read the first three to read this one? Becky Well, it helps to comprehend the relationships between the characters and adds some depth to the narrative. But, it could be read alone Where do I post reviews? I'm new here. Ayshe When you mark a book as read, window shows up where there's an optional "What did you think? If it's book you already sh …more When you mark a book as read, window shows up where there's an optional "What did you think?

See all 3 questions about The Judas Strain…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Oct 05, Will Byrnes rated it liked it. The Sigma Force is back in action. A deadly microbe has turned parts of the ocean into a toxic, flesh eating monster. What the hell is going on? Gray Pierce and the other fun folks of the Sigma Force team up with the evil Seichan to try to keep their nemesis, the Guild, from using this biological threat as a new form of bio-weapon.

The action takes place with Grey and Seichan in one group and Lisa Cummings and Monk in the other, focused in the Indonesian Islands, where this threat to humanity has its origins. In this book, the mystery is what happened to Marco Polo during his return trip from China, that caused him to lose most of his expedition, a secret that is intimately linked to the bio-hazard of today?

It entails having to figure out a secret code on an obelisk that has been stolen from the Vatican, and it goes from there. The organizations manage to effect whatever actions they need done with minimal dealings with the real world, but hey, this is pure entertainment.

Why quibble? There is some payload here, the Marco Polo bit for one, angel writing for another, bioluminescence for a third, and an intimation that there are awful things lying much nearer than we might have supposed, that are not necessarily entirely dead. It was a fun, fast read, and would be a good book for summer reading.

This is not book club fodder. View all 5 comments. I recall enjoying one of his books over a decade ago, but I couldn't remember which one I also vividly recall seeing one of his stand-alone novels, Amazonia, in the airports when I was traveling a lot more last decade. That said, I've just finished the fourth book in this series, The Judas Strain, and am eager to continue reading more in the future, even if I had mixed reactions to this particular installment.

The characters are great, and the initial plot kicks off with a bang. A mysterious disease killing all ocean life near an island off the coast of Australia. A Indonesian cruise-liner gone missing. A strange kidnapping in progress.

A peculiar theft and signal left at the Vatican. What could they all have to do with one another? Commander Gray Pierce must figure it out, and this time, his friends and his parents are in deep trouble. Seichen, his mortal enemy from previous books, needs to partner with him. Which side is she on? The descriptions are fantastic, and the tracking of Marco Polo's historic journey in the 13th century makes for a compelling connected backdrop.

But it was still missing something. While I only half understood the scientific and medical pieces, so many questions were vague and unanswered. A visit to the Hagia in Sofia was disjointed in terms of how they tried to find clues. Too many chapter-ending cliffhangers went nowhere for a while. It felt like two people wrote the book, especially when named characters suddenly became generic lines Most of this I usually ignore and focus on the plot or the ability for the story to pull me in so much that I can't help but stay up late.

Unfortunately, I found myself skimming just to get to answers midway. All that said, if you love the characters and the thrill of the chase, it's a good book. I wish it had more Marco Polo details as well as a better connection to the religious history of being a Judas. It was like a title in name only I'll keep reading the series, one a month until I catch up, but the next one better step it up!

View 2 comments. Aug 13, Stephen rated it liked it Shelves: ebooks , spy-stuff , , conspiracies-and-weird-science , audiobook , x-filing-and-secret-histories. The SIGMA Force is one of the truly delicious concepts to be introduced into the popcorn-eating, page-turning, actiony, spy-guy, thrill-o-rama genre. PhD toting scientific brainiacs with Navy Seal kill skills and James Bond spy craft minus babes and booze…damn.

SIGMA is charged with tracking down and neutralizing threats in the form of advanced technology, whether biological, chemical or mechanical. The threats are always large, the explosions are always loud and the pace with a few exceptions I mention in my gripes is always on turbo.

Fear not because James Rollins is a very capable story-teller and maintains very good command of his plot. Put simply, they are both smart and a ton of fun. The Judas Strain is the 4th SIGMA novel and finds the team racing against time as usual to investigate an unusual and highly contagious viral outbreak in the Indian Ocean. The plague has the potential to be an extinction level event if not contained or if no cure can be found. Marco left China with 14 ships and men, but when he arrived in Italy was down to 2 ships and only 18 men.

From there, clues lead to a mysterious connection between Marco Polo and the Vatican, clues written in angelic script, the Hindu temple complex of Angkor Wat, cannibalism, piracy and lions, tigers and bears…OH MY!!

Exciting, smarter than your average action thriller and containing highly engaging plot points. If you are a fan of this genre, you should definitely be reading this. First, as with many of these types of novels, it is very formulaic. You know pretty much what you are going to get when you pick it up. Good guys win, bad guy lose, world is saved, peace preserved and justice served.

Nothing horrible about that, it just takes a bit of the tension out of certain aspects of the plot. This is one thing Rollins does not do well and yet he spends too much time trying to make it work. His characters are two dimensional and for this kind of story, that is just fine. If he were to cut out all of the attempts to round out his characters and show they have any life outside of SIGMA, he could trim this down to to pages of smart, high octane covert action mystery with great historical background and turn this novel into a 5 star thrilltastic joy bringer.

Still, the good parts are so interesting and I love the complicated, historical based plots so much that I will continue happily reading the series, hoping for more of the same good and less of everything else. View all 9 comments. Oct 02, Kendra rated it really liked it. I'm a little bit embarrassed to give this book a 4, but there you go. It's a guilty pleasure, I guess, because the book is kind of ridiculous in a testosterone-fueled Indiana-Jones-meets-Mission-Impossible kind of way.

If this tells you anything, I nearly downgraded it to a 3 because of the cannibals. Yes, cannibals. I was about 60 pages into the book before I realized that it was part of a series.

Really, it's just the book was borrowed, and I didn't want to keep it for an unusually long time while I tracked down and read all of the books that came before it. Very basic plot summary: Secret military-ish agency must stop end of the world by figuring out the connection between Marco Polo and a strange bacterial outbreak on Christmas Island. There's some code-breaking and historical speculation that will appeal to the Da Vinci Code enthusiasts out there. And did I mention that there are cannibals?

Dec 29, Lorena rated it really liked it. James Rollins' novels generally remind me of some weird combination of Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and Tom Clancy -- none of whom are among my favorite authors. If that sounds far-fetched, it's only because you haven't read it. Rollins nearly a James Rollins' novels generally remind me of some weird combination of Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and Tom Clancy -- none of whom are among my favorite authors.

Rollins nearly always leaves me thinking "huh. What if? View 1 comment. Apr 17, Freda Malone rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. It is mysteriously eerie and puzzling but also intriguing and compelling. He starts out with 14 ships and over warriors, only to be wiped out by a mysterious plague that wipes out all but 18 men including himself, and a betrothed princess bound for Persia.

This secret must be kept hidden at all costs but what is it? Christmas Island - centuries later A husband and wife, leisurely enjoying a day diving along the coast of Christmas Island becomes overcome by a phenomenon that quickly engulfs the water.

A neon green algae glowing substance has suddenly surrounded their yacht. As the wife boards the boat, she is immediately covered in a blister like rash that confounds them. Soon they realize the sea creatures are floating, dead. Dolphins, fish, and sea turtles. Lisa Cummings and Painter Crowe to save the world from a pandemic.

I always learn something new about the world as well as history and cultures, centuries before my time. Did you know that there are over 18, Indonesia Islands? Only slightly over inhabited and over 8, unnamed. That is just wild! In a way I find Rollins books enchanting with the mysteries of treasures that might be hidden and buried as well as the deadly curses fictionally among them.

Another great adventure, this one. Aug 28, Simone Kearney rated it really liked it Recommends it for: adults. I have read a couple of his books so far and am in complete agreement with my friend.

I find that the books start off in a very exciting way and hold my attention throughout. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a historical thri A friend recommended James Rollins to me as I like books by Dan Brown, and Steve Barry.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a historical thriller. I think Map of Bones and Sandstorm are my favorite books in the Sigma Force series, but really, they are all superb adventures, and The Judas Strain is no exception. After reading 4 books in the series, I'm completely invested in these characters.

I have images of them in my head. I know and love or hate their personalities. I root for their success and worry at their failures and ultimately, I want them to save the world.

He tried to get up, but was held on his knees by a gun behind his ear. As he realized that this was the traditional Russian method of execution, the contents of his stomach turned rancid.

The men from the Jeep pulled the Frenchmen out of the truck and forced them to their knees beside TR. In his peripheral vision, TR saw the man fall face forward into the wheat. Nicolai Butuzov! A burly guy dressed like the others, but wearing a military beret, had been inspecting the contents of the truck. He turned now and barked an order in Russian. He left the truck and walked over to TR. TR had suspected from the start that the name his contact had used was probably an alias, but shouting it had done the trick.

The burly Russian gave another order, and the assassin looming over TR stepped back. The Russian extended a hand to help him up. Blake on a laminectomy. Did Dr. Doyle, the cardiovascular guy, come into the OR at any time during the procedure?

Chris was working a hunch. In the last two weeks, three patients in the hospital had developed strep A infections in their surgical wounds. One case would have raised her eyebrows, three was an epidemic. Since strep was an organism carried by people and not by contaminated water or instruments, and was most often transmitted into wounds during surgery, she had concentrated her attention on the OR personnel in each case.

Tom Doyle had been the surgeon of record on two of the three cases, but not the third. Interestingly, the OR log sheets had shown that the laminectomy case Chris had asked Mallon about had been done in OR 4, which was right next to the room where Doyle had performed a triple bypass that had become infected. And the two surgeries had been done on the same day at the same time, a fact too intriguing to ignore. Seeing that Chris was so understanding, Mallon let her defenses down. Then she hit on something.

Stopped in to tell Dr. Blake that he had to drop out of the fishing trip they had planned. Doyle was the carrier. The pager in her pocket began to vibrate. Paula must have misunderstood. Then she began to remember what it had been like for her and her mother struggling financially without her father. How even now, with her mother dead, she faced life alone, unable to trust any man enough to let them get too close, unwilling to ever put herself in a position to be left again.

The truth will set you free? Not always, brother. Why would he crawl out of hiding now? So, even with the new crossover between the two buildings on the third floor, she faced a fairly long walk.

Upon reaching the entrance to the main office, she took a moment to gather herself, then went in. Almost all their practice came from being called in by other physicians to manage infections acquired by patients already in the hospital. So they seldom had a full waiting room, which is why they only had a couple of chairs, mostly for drug reps who dropped in. Thus, when Chris walked through the door, there was only one man there.

He stood expectantly, and they stared awkwardly at each other. He was wearing black slacks and an eggshell-colored sport coat over a black turtleneck. His brown hair, receding in front, hung to his shoulders in back. Round wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache and goatee completed the impression that he was either a creative-type guy or wished to look like one.

Chris had only two pictures of her father: a fuzzy full-length snapshot taken when he was twenty, and a better head shot made around fifteen years ago. This man bore some resemblance to her father, but she still found it hard to accept that this was him.

Beyond her general disbelief, she remembered him as being a lot bigger. But of course, everything seems bigger to a six-year-old than to an adult. His skin had a distinctive yellow-green hue, and the waistband of his turtleneck rested on a potbelly probably caused by fluid accumulating in his peritoneal cavity. A classic case of liver failure. He spoke first. He followed her there, and she shut the door. The name on the license was Wayne Collins.

It was him.