Review: The Widow's Strike

The Widow's Strike by Brad Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Widow's Strike (a title which I feared was a spoiler to the ending of Pike #3, but isn't) is a great addition to the series. I enjoyed the new angle of bio/chem warfare instead of another straight terrorist with a bomb threat. I felt the story had just the right amount of "sciency" stuff to both explain the plot help us as the reader understand the threat.

A corrupt pharmaceutical company (who's CEO sits on the Task Force oversight committee) see's opportunity for profit in a vicious new strain of bird flu. The idea was to genetically modify the virus so humans could contract it but in a controlled and highly secured lab, then create an antigen so when the inevitable bird flu pandemic hits, they'll have the "cure" and sell it at ridiculous margins. Without spoilers we can say an old enemy of the Task Force comes back into play, learns of the bird flu and hopes to both steal and weaponize it.

The ensuing story is a multi-country chase lead by Pike's team to uncover the plot and isolate patient zero to stop a devastating fatal flu outbreak. As always, Brad Taylor gives us no shortage of close quarters combat and well detailed shootouts! I suppose one could argue the outcome was a tad predictable. It's tough to establish such a horrible global threat in a plot and lead us as readers to believe it's really going to happen, especially since I know for certain there is Pike #5 waiting for me right after this one. That being said, the ending did not disappoint and was not as easily predicted as you might initially think.

I continue to enjoy the building tension between Pike and Jennifer but am starting to boarder on "enough already." Not that I want them to elope to Las Vegas, but considering we're 4 stories into the series and still dangling on "we still haven't had that talk" I think it's time to S or get of the P if you follow. Especially with the ending of #3, I think that lead us to believe things were going to happen now, but without spoiling this edition I can tell you no it does not haha. A good read by all means and I will most definitely start #5 asap.

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