Brad Thor's latest political thriller opens up with a dark and ominous prologue. The President of the United States has apparently become afflicted with some sort of powerful disease strain and is being taken away for medical observation. Word of the unknown and deadly virus spreads across the country, and inevitable panic sets in.

With just this opening piece, readers will recognize that they are diving into a different kind of Brad Thor book. Thor has always written well-researched and chillingly accurate thrillers that have their finger on the pulse of the inner workings of intelligence systems. In CODE OF CONDUCT, he has pushed the boundaries beyond what we have come to expect of a Brad Thor novel.

"What starts out as slow and methodical quietly builds like a tidal wave, and the last third of the novel is impossible to put down."

Of course, no story of his would be complete without his main character: Navy SEAL turned counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath, who begins the story in the Congo, the world's deadliest conflict zone. His mission does not involve terrorists per se, but rather an alleged highly communicable disease that has wreaked havoc on the African population and one that easily could be turned into a weapon should it get into the wrong hands.

Harvath and his superiors have no clue how accurate their suspicions are. It turns out that a billionaire egomaniac named Pierre Damien, a leader of a world health organization with controversial ideas on population control, has managed to get his hands on this African virus with plans to aim it directly at the U.S. government and all its leaders.

African hemorrhagic fever is the virus and is far worse than Ebola. It makes the Black Death --- which wiped out half the population of Europe --- look like the common cold. No one is prepared for this or vaccinated against it; just as Damien predicted, the heads of the U.S. government begin to succumb to this new plague one by one.

With the population in a panic and some key government insiders working with Damien and his twisted agenda, Harvath and a small band of colleagues are up against the clock, not only to stop those responsible, but also to find an answer to slowing the strain before it wipes out billions.

CODE OF CONDUCT pulls no punches, and only a protagonist and antihero like Scot Harvath could have any chance of figuring out the monumental problem that the author has thrown in front of him. What starts out as slow and methodical quietly builds like a tidal wave, and the last third of the novel is impossible to put down. Here is another terrific effort by Brad Thor, whose writing constantly reminds us just how real and foreboding certain threats are to our way of life.