Reviews for Maze master

Publishers Weekly
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University of Virginia archeology professor Martin Nadai, the hero of this uninspired Da Vinci Code knockoff from bestseller Gear (The Betrayal: The Lost Life of Jesus, with W. Michael Gear), is the world's leading expert on the Marham-i- Isa, "the legendary healing ointment created by Jesus to heal the sick and raise the dead." Anna Asher, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, claims that the ointment is not only real but can be found in a cave in Egypt's Black Canyon. A terrifying new retrovirus has cropped up in France, and she needs Martin's help in determining its exact location to save humanity. Martin agrees to assist, but he remains skeptical about the source of her certainty that Marham-i-Isa is real-a discredited scientist, James Hakari, who believes that God has spoken to humanity through the genetic code. Predictably, Martin finds himself attracted to Anna, and their lives are imperiled by their search. Gear is no Michael Crichton when it comes to presenting her scientific speculations, making suspension of disbelief a challenge. Agent: Matt Bialer, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Gear, known mostly for her popular historical fiction (especially the First North Americans series, written with her husband, W. Michael Gear), steps into the near future for this tense thriller. A new retrovirus has been unleashed on the world well, new might not be the right word. A geneticist believes LucentB isn't new at all, but rather a modern-day reoccurrence of an ancient virus. The American government believes he's probably right; it also believes he might be the only person who can find a cure. But there are problems. The geneticist has gone into hiding, and there is a very good chance he is insane. The government tasks Anna Asher, a former intelligence operative, with finding the missing man; teaming up with an expert in ancient systems of writing, Anna races against time to follow the clues she believes the geneticist has left for her clues that, she hopes, will lead her to a cure for the deadly virus. Gear is certainly trying something different here, at least in terms of her own writing, but she isn't exactly breaking new ground (this could easily have been, to pick one of many names out of the hat, a James Rollins novel). Still, Gear brings her own voice to the story, her own way of tackling the follow-the-clues format, and the result is a crisply written, lively, and quite satisfying novel anything but a routine addition to an already overpopulated subgenre.--David Pitt Copyright 2018 Booklist

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