While Austin believes the lab's destruction is to be blamed on some negative force that has always followed him and wants nothing more than to keep him from helping humanity, CIA Director Orin Varneys doesn't want to take any chances that someone else could have meant harm to Austin, and hence, the family was given new identities.
As Austin struggles to regain the mental faculties he once possessed, with the love and support of his wife, Christina, dangerous plans are unfolding on the other side of the country and world. Colum McAlister, the former CEO of Bushings Pharmaceuticals, a big pharma company, is now in jail due to events in the last book and he blames Robert Austin, not only for his incarceration, but also for the billions in lost revenues, because Austin keeps curing diseases that line McAlister's pockets. Some six years ago, long before his incarceration, McAlister blackmailed a Muslim chemist who was working with a jihadist group to create a deadly disease that could be used to get rival political groups and unwieldy countries under their control. McAlister threatened to expose the chemist's sexual proclivities unless he also made a cure for this devastating virus and provided it to McAlister, so that he could manufacture it and be prepared to hold the world-saving cure, if and when it was needed. Since Dr. Mahmoud, the chemist, was promised that the disease was only always going to be used to threaten and never would be released into the wild, he did as he was told, to protect himself. But the very nature of a jihadist group is extreme, and while the group's threats of "The Sword of the Madhi" that would destroy their enemies were initially ignored, soon the world would begin to take notice.
Fast-forward a few years and the disease dubbed HRFS is rampaging areas in the Middle East and begins to spread. Initially, the cure McAlister possesses and has manufactured through a Swiss facility (and many layers of shell corporations) does the trick, but soon the cure begins to fail. With a worldwide HRFS epidemic in full force, it becomes clear that only Dr. Austin could have the mental capacity to cure this designed disease that has evolved, but is he up to the task? He has been working for the past few years to unlock his brain's capacity once more, but while working on a cure for HRFS, he just may have created the recipe for the destruction of all of mankind.
The Austin Paradox jumps around a good bit and covers a number of years in Austin's life. It follows him and Christina, but also jumps to Colum McAlister in prison and before, the jihadist group who hold the world hostage with HRFS, as well as a group of big time players in the financial market who are linked up with McAlister and stand to profit heavily off the cure. To be honest, in the early portions of the book, I had to flip back to previous events because I was getting a bit confused with the evil players. Personally, I wasn't in love with The Austin Paradox, mostly because I suppose I found Robert Austin's character to be a bit far-fetched. It wasn't a bad book, by any means. I just wasn't driven to get to the conclusion like I am with some books.
If you've been reading the series, you'll want to see how the next chapter unfolds, but if The Austin Paradox sounds intriguing to you, you might consider picking up the first book in the series, Miracle Man, and reading it first to familiarize yourself with the characters and backstory.
