Silly, cheap, and fun: a garden-variety potboiler with a neat gimmick thrown in.
A debut thriller by a former NSA intelligence analyst, speculating on what would happen if the Second Coming of Christ were produced by cloning.
Harold Goodman thinks he can create God. A biochemist and atheist, Goodman became involved in a 1980s project to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin through DNA and Carbon-14 dating. Although he took the assignment convinced that the shroud was a fake, he discovered that it was, in fact, 2,000 years old—and, even more astonishing, that it contained live skin cells. Goodman now clones the cells and, with the help of a surrogate mother, gives birth to Christ’s genetic twin. He names the boy Christopher and passes him off as his orphaned nephew. But a handful of insiders know the real story, among them Goodman’s ex-student Decker Hawthorne (a journalist who covered the shroud investigation) and Israeli physicist Joshua Rosen (a “Messianic Jew” who accepts the divinity of Christ). The overriding question: Is Christopher the Son of God or not? We’re not saying, but we can tell you that he has nightmares of being crucified and seems to possess powers he can’t account for. Plus, his coming into the world coincides with a series of disasters (“war and rumors of wars”), including a strange plague that brings the instantaneous and unexplained death (in one day) of nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Then, almost as an afterthought, full-scale war erupts in the Middle East: The Arabs advance on Israel, and Russian forces occupy the entire region. The UN is called in, and Christopher, through the political connections of Decker Hawthorne, becomes involved in the negotiations. Will he be able to avert Armageddon? That may depend on whether Christ prefers to play the role of Prince of Peace—or Lion of Judah.
Silly, cheap, and fun: a garden-variety potboiler with a neat gimmick thrown in. (N.B.: The first of a trilogy, In His Image was originally self-published on Amazon.com, where it sold, Warner tells us, over 10,000 copies.)Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2003
ISBN: 0-446-53125-1
Page Count: 420
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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