From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
In this high-octane thriller by James Rollins, an elite special ops unit is faced with solving a mystery shrouded in the mists of time: one that could save -- or completely destroy -- humankind.

Sigma Force is a covert group of military scientists overseen by the Department of Defense's research and development wing. Led by former Navy SEAL Painter Crowe (the hero of 2004's Sandstorm), members of the counterespionage team are scattered all over the world on individual missions. Grayson Pierce is in Copenhagen, following up a tip about an increase in black market sales of Victorian-era documents, including a Bible once owned by Charles Darwin. Crowe witnesses firsthand an outbreak of plague in a Himalayan monastery that drives peaceful monks to butcher one another. Scrawled on the walls in blood is a series of strange runes -- and carved into the head monk's chest is a swastika. Meanwhile, on a sprawling estate in South Africa, a sinister program begun during WWII is about to be unleashed upon the world…

Rollins's previous thrillers (Map of Bones, Sandstorm, Ice Hunt, et al.) have been likened to the Indiana Jones movies for good reason -- scientific adventurers risking life and limb in exotic locales to locate and/or unlock arcane knowledge -- and Black Order is no different. Incredibly fast-paced, centered around intensely controversial subject matter (the origins of life and theories of evolution), and featuring enough cryptic codes, secret societies, and historical conspiracies to satisfy the most fanatical Da Vinci Code fan, this high-octane thriller (which subtly blends elements of historical fiction and science fiction) practically demands to be read. It's quite possibly Rollins's best work to date. Paul Goat Allen

From the Publisher

In Copenhagen . . . a suspicious bookstore fire propels Commander Gray Pierce on a relentless hunt across four continents—and into a terrifying mystery surrounding horrific experiments once performed in a now-abandoned laboratory buried in a hollowed-out mountain in Poland.

In the mountains of Nepal . . . in a remote monastery, Buddhist monks inexplicably turn to cannibalism and torture—while Painter Crowe, director of Sigma Force, begins to show signs of the same baffling, mind-destroying malady . . . and Lisa Cummings, a dedicated American doctor, becomes the target of a brutal clandestine assassin.

Now only Gray Pierce and Sigma Force can save a world suddenly in terrible jeopardy. Because a new order is on the rise—an annihilating nightmare growing at the heart of the greatest mystery of all: the origin of life.

Publishers Weekly

What would thriller writers do without the Nazis? At the start of Rollins's inventive eighth Sigma Force novel, a secret experiment is smuggled out of Berlin in the waning days of WWII. While the Americans have been working on the atomic bomb, the Nazis were delving into the paradoxical tenets of quantum mechanics. In the present day, descendants of Heinrich Himmler are trying to create a new race of Aryan supermen. Last seen in 2005's Map of Bones, Painter Crowe and Grayson Pierce, employees of Sigma Force, a secret arm of the U.S. military, venture to the brink of death to puzzle out mysteries that encompass the theories of evolution, intelligent design, and the physical and spiritual nature of love and God. It's a tall order, but every time the author appears to have stretched too far, he saves the read by throwing in a fascinating scientific or historical fact, plus a scene of heart-pumping action. This is Cussler and Ludlum territory with a dash of Dan Brown, sure to please devotees of any of these authors. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Ancient philosophies clash with major scientific discoveries in Rollins's (Map of Bones) latest adventure, which tackles the debate over intelligent design. A mysterious plague in the Himalayas sends medical doctor Lisa Cummings to a monastery where all of the monks have died. There she meets the director of Sigma Force a covert arm of the Department of Defense who has been exposed to the disease but is still alive. Meanwhile, when another Sigma Force operative helps a teenage girl in possession of Charles Darwin's Bible, they both become the target of assassins who want the notes scribbled in the margins. These notes will tie in to the disease at the top of the world Mt. Everest and a conspiracy that began at the tail end of World War II. All of these diverse elements blend seamlessly in Rollins's hands. Readers will eagerly await the fourth "Sigma Force" installment. For all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/06.] Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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Black Order

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

1945
May 4
6:22 A.M.

Fortress city of Breslau, Poland

The body floated in the sludge that sluiced through the dank sewers. The corpse of a boy, bloated and rat gnawed, had been stripped of boots, pants, and shirt. Nothing went to waste in the besieged city.

SS Obergruppenfuhrer Jakob Sporrenberg nudged past the corpse, stirring the filth. Offal and excrement. Blood and bile. The wet scarf tied around his nose and mouth did little to ward off the stench. This was what the great war had come to. The mighty reduced to crawling through sewers to escape. But he had his orders.

Overhead the double crump-wump of Russian artillery pummeled the city. Each explosion bruised his gut with its concussive shock. The Russians had broken down the gates, bombed the airport, and even now, tanks ground down the cobbled streets while transport carriers landed on Kaiserstrasse. The main thoroughfare had been converted into a landing strip by parallel rows of flaming oil barrels, adding their smoke to the already choked early morning skies, keeping dawn at bay. Fighting waged in every street, in every home, from attic to basement.

Every house a fortress.

That had beenGauleiter Hanke's final command to the populace. The city had to hold out as long as possible. The future of the Third Reich depended on it. And on Jakob Sporrenberg.

"Mach schnell," he urged the others behind him.

His unit of the Sicherheitsdienst -- designation Special Evacuation Kommando -- trailed him, knee-deep in filthy water. Fourteen men. All armed. All dressed in black. All burdened with heavy packs. In the middle, four of the largest men, former Nordsee dockmen, bore poles on their shoulders, bearing aloft massive crates.

There was a reason the Russians were striking this lone city deep in the Sudeten Mountains between Germany and Poland. The fortifications of Breslau guarded the gateway to the highlands beyond. For the past two years, forced labor from the concentration camp of Gross-Rosen had hollowed out a neighboring mountain peak. A hundred kilometers of tunnels clawed and blasted, all to service one secret project, one kept buried away from prying Allied eyes.

Die Riese . . . the Giant.

But word had still spread. Perhaps one of the villagers outside the Wenceslas Mine had whispered of the illness, the sudden malaise that had afflicted even those well outside the complex.

If only they'd had more time to complete the research . . .

Still, a part of Jakob Sporrenberg balked. He didn't know all that was involved with the secret project, mostly just the code name: Chronos. Still, he knew enough. He had seen the bodies used in the experiments. He had heard the screams.

Abomination.

That was the one word that had come to mind and iced his blood.

He'd had no trouble executing the scientists. The sixty-two men and women had been taken outside and shot twice in the head. No one must know what had transpired in the depths of the Wenceslas Mine . . . or what was found. Only one researcher was allowed to live.

Doktor Tola Hirszfeld.

Jakob heard her sloshing behind him, half dragged by one of his men, wrists secured behind her back. She was tall for a woman, late twenties, small breasted but of ample waist and shapely legs. Her hair flowed smooth and black, her skin as pale as milk from the months spent underground. She was to have been killed with the others, but her father, Oberarbeitsleiter Hugo Hirszfeld, overseer of the project, had finally shown his corrupted blood, his half-Jewish heritage. He had attempted to destroy his research files, but he had been shot by one of the guards and killed before he could firebomb his subterranean office. Fortunately for his daughter, someone with full knowledge of die Glocke had to survive, to carry on the work. She, a genius like her father, knew his research better than any of the other scientists.

But she would need coaxing from here.

Fire burned in her eyes whenever Jakob glanced her way. He could feel her hatred like the heat of an open furnace. But she would cooperate . . . like her father had before her. Jakob knew how to deal with Juden, especially those of mixed blood. Mischlinge. They were the worst. Partial Jews. There were some hundred thousand Mischlinge in military service to the Reich. Jewish soldiers. Rare exemptions to Nazi law had allowed such mixed blood to still serve, sparing their lives. It required special dispensation. Such Mischlinge usually proved to be the fiercest soldiers, needing to show their loyalty to Reich over race.

Still, Jakob had never trusted them. Tola's father proved the validity of his suspicions. The doctor's attempted sabotage had not surprised Jakob. Juden were never to be trusted, only exterminated.

But Hugo Hirszfeld's exemption papers had been signed by the fuhrer himself, sparing not only the father and daughter, but also a pair of elderly parents somewhere in the middle of Germany. So while Jakob had no trust of the Mischlinge, he placed his full faith in his fuhrer. His orders had been letter specific: evacuate the mine of the necessary resources to continue the work and destroy the rest.

That meant sparing the daughter.

And the baby.

The newborn boy was swaddled and bundled into a pack, a Jewish infant, no more than a month old. The child had been given a light sedative to keep him silent as they made their escape.

Within the child burned the heart of the abomination, the true source of Jakob's revulsion. All of the hopes for the Third Reich lay in his tiny hands -- the hands of a Jewish infant. Bile rose at such a thought. Better to impale the child on a bayonet. But he had his orders.

He also saw how Tola watched the boy. Her eyes glowed with a mix of fire and grief. Besides aiding in her father's research, Tola had served as the boy's foster mother, rocking him asleep, feeding him. The child was the only reason the woman was cooperating at all. It had been a threat on the boy's life that had finally made Tola acquiesce to Jakob's demands.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Black Order by James Rollins Copyright © 2006 by James Rollins. Excerpted by permission.
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