The Omega Theory

Science meets geopolitics meets religious fanaticism in Alpert's breathless sequel to Final Theory. Science historian David Swift and his physicist wife, Monique Reynolds, go in search of their autistic adopted son, 19-year-old Michael Gupta, who, savantlike, has memorized Einstein's unified field theory, after members of a religious cult kidnap Michael from the Upper Manhattan Autism Center. The kidnapping occurs on the same day that Iran tests a nuclear device that does more than generate a seismic rumble. According to a Columbia colleague of Swift's, it "severed the continuity of our universe." Accompanied by FBI special agent Lucille Parker, Swift and Reynolds embark on a tiring (and sometimes tiresome) quest that takes them to Jerusalem and Turkmenistan. Those who can identify with characters who are little more than plot devices or mouthpieces for exposition—the good guys rant about advanced physics, the bad ones about the necessity of the coming apocalypse—will be most rewarded. (Feb.)