The Bottom Line: If you love secret societies, conspiracy theories and hard sci-fi, don’t miss Deceit of the Manna: Nature’s Fury. Riveting cover-to-cover, it’s like digesting an eight-course meal.
The fourth book in Henry Cox’s bestselling Deceit series opens on a chilly May 1976 morning in Bozeman, Montana. In a snug, slightly ramshackle bungalow near the Montana State campus, Brice, a tall and deliriously in love graduate student, sets off on a rugged field expedition. To further his research studying elk migration and mysterious infection, he travels to the remote and foreboding southwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park, infamously nicknamed the Zone of Death.
Brice soon finds a cow elk with injuries that suggest human cruelty. As he begins to treat the animal, he’s approached by Professor Petrov, a familiar figure from the Montana State University campus, who is revealed to be a sleeper agent with dark motives. A towering man named Alek emerges behind him. In a moment of horrifying clarity, Brice realizes Betty was a decoy, her presence staged to lure him here. Petrov confesses to orchestrating it all, revealing that the mysterious prion afflicting the elk herds is the product of covert Soviet biowarfare research. The infection, rooted in a decades-old discovery in Colorado, has been deliberately introduced into U.S. wildlife through manipulated research grants, compromised professors, and weaponized scientific ignorance.
What begins as a quiet love story explodes into a geopolitical and agriculture nightmare. The action takes place across multiple timelines between Montana, Utah, Kansas, South Dakota, Maryland, Virginia and elsewhere. Among Cox’s settings are missile silos and biosecurity research centers, each one written with the meticulous care of a landscape painter.
Amidst yet another gigantic cast, Solange Aubert, a sexy and fashionable international businesswoman in her late thirties, won’t be forgotten. Deftly described by another character as “a type of mythical deity,” she’s by far Cox’s most emotional character, but is also the one with the most discipline and power. Is she capable of murder? Absolutely. But more interestingly, her reactions to revolting concepts – whether it’s an aging person’s saggy physique, or the concept of mandatory mood-altering ankle bracelets to help control a certain population – is always oddly enthralling and unpredictable. Like a highly anticipated hit of ketamine (which she knows a thing or two about), readers will start salivating at each scene in which she appears.
Fans of the Deceit series will rejoice as the legacy of Benjamin Oliver lives on, but will also rejoice in the reappearance of familiar names such as Colonel Li Huiwei, Danish Intelligence officer Rosett Bilving and RAF Commander Sloane Emery. While the dense story is riveting cover-to-cover, it’s like digesting an eight-course meal. Cox, of course, delivers one final digestif before you go – a riveting explanation of The Templar Room. In this completely unexpected but wholly appreciated appendix, he ties together the legend, primary players (including former presidents Chester Arthur, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland and others) and connects them to a possible conspiracy theory.
