Having recovered, Paul is checked out of hospital but warned he will have to take an anti-fungal medicine for several years, advice he immediately ignores because he has become aware that, with the fungus’ help, he is clearer thinking, has almost total recall, and is generally even brighter than he was before. Fortunately, though, high-ranking officer Melody Muniz spots his unusual approach, especially his command of words and languages, and sees his potential after all, to do well in that type of work one needs to think outside the box and, in his case, Neil does not seem to even see the box.

Unfortunately Neil is hardly a normal office-type worker he is young, inexperienced, and full of his own ideas he fails to understand the norms of how government organisations work, annoys his interviewer, and generally makes a mess of the whole process. If he gets it, he will be following in his father’s footsteps, though his father had retired early due to the onset of Alzheimer’s. This is just the start, the rest of the story is told in the first person by his younger brother Neil.Įven as Paul is flying home, Neil attends an interview at the NSA (National Security Agency) for a post as a code breaker. They are soon repatriated to the States, where it becomes apparent that they are both suffering from a severe fungal infection Paul just survives but Maisie does not. Jumping overboard, only he and fellow-passenger Maisie escape the onslaught but are then faced with a long walk through the rainforest they somehow make it back to town, though with no memory of how they achieved it. He is on a riverboat, heading back to Manaus, when they are attacked by ‘terrorists’. Paul Johns is a mycologist and he has been collecting fungi in a remote part of the Amazon rainforest. It is well written and takes its time to reveal the full story indeed, it keeps going right up to the end. Review of The Genius Plague by David Walton Fiction Reviews