Book Review: The Genius Plague by David Walton
Neil Johns is eager to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the NSA, but his lack of strong academic credentials and his reliance on unorthodox techniques make it a long shot. Seeing his promise, the agency gives him a chance, but Neil’s success feels bittersweet. Suffering from early-onset Alzheimers, Neil’s father can’t recognize his son’s accomplishments or be there to help him navigate the challenges that accompany them. Neil’s developing, tenuous professional life also becomes further complicated by other family matters. His mycologist brother Paul returns from a trip to the Amazon that ended by surviving a guerilla terrorist attack and Paul’s subsequent escape through the jungle. Paul arrives home in the US troubled by missing memories of just how he managed to survive to return to human civilization. Before even leaving the airport Paul collapses in front of Neil from what is soon diagnosed as fungal pneumonia. Neil soon begins to suspect that his brother’s condition is something much more than a common infection, something that may be spreading into a global pandemic with frightening sociopolitical implications that relate to current threats that he is analyzing with the NSA.
