A POTTER'S TALE
by Dave Davis
Two reporters on the trail of a murderer discover an ancient secret of global consequence in Davis’ debut mystery novel.
In 638, a Mayan astrologer calculates the year that the world will come to an end. In 1935, an archaeologist unearths a codex from beneath the tomb of the last great Mayan king. In present- day Washington, D.C., virtuosic high school student DiShannia Johnson Johns—who recently received the President’s Science Prize for research she conducted on the collapse of the Maya—is found beaten to death in an alley. Washington Post reporters Noah Scott and Kate Chien-Forest—whose challenges include PTSD and family issues, respectively—were already covering DiShannia’s achievements, so her murder feels personal to them. The autopsy proves that something strange is going on: “Two things killed her: the blow to her head was the immediate cause, but something was wrong with that pancreas, not diabetes, something induced.” The two set out to uncover who is behind her death, but the clues raise more questions than answers. The two journalists are soon caught up in a continent-hopping whirlwind of history, science, politics, and conspiracy, all of which point improbably toward an ancient Mayan prophecy about the end of the world. Davis’ prose is sharp and stylized, in part due to his choice to have the novel narrated by God—also known as the Potter—who turns out to be quite smarmy: “It’s true I have no name, or many. The unpronounceable Jahweh for example, the arrogance of I-am-who-I-am. Or Father, raising the specter of my gender, a laughable but understandable worry; humans are so—what’s the exact word here?—invested in gender and sex. Or God.” Davis tries a bit too hard to make everything seem epic, including the largely unnecessary device of using multiple timelines. The result is that the novel takes a while to get started. When it does, it’s engaging enough, though the content is somewhat less than original. Readers who go in for broad historical conspiracies will likely enjoy this offering for all its pretensions. Others will be better off passing it by.
A God-narrated thriller about an ancient calendar and the possible end of the world.