DARK SONNET

In McCarthy and Dohar’s thriller, an ex-cleric and his friend must solve a poetic puzzle that may be connected to multiple murders.

Myles Dunn, a former Jesuit priest (and “self-professed adrenaline junky…who happens to be a polyglot with an advanced degree in world religions”), is lured back to his alma mater by his “one-time fellow Jesuit and best mate,” Jeremy Strand, with an email that promises the solution to a mystery. Upon his arrival in Oxford, England, from Colorado, he finds a community rattled by the horrific murder of an altar boy, which bigots believe was committed by someone from the local Muslim immigrant community. Strand, an esoteric Jesuit and poetry scholar, has discovered a hidden meaning in one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ lost “dark” sonnets. Specifically, he believes that Hopkins, a fellow Jesuit and brilliant and idiosyncratic Victorian poet, wrote this poem in an effort to reveal the “quasi-historical legend” of the Cuxham Chalice, a priceless artifact from the time of the Lumen, a secret religious sect founded during the reign of King Henry VIII. When Strand goes missing—and another murder, similar to the first, is committed—Myles and Oxford librarian Eva Bashir must race to solve the poetic riddle and find out who’s behind the crimes. They soon discover that the culprit will go to any length to keep their secret hidden. Fans of Dan Brown’s historical thrillers, particularly the bestselling The Da Vinci Code(2003), are likely to best appreciate McCarthy and Dohar’s dive into the complex and mysterious history of “the self-proclaimed ‘keepers of the Grail.’ ” The plot’s use of the work of Hopkins, a complicated author who often invented his own words, gives readers a clever character to explore. However, the intricate poetic devices at play, which include reverse acrostics, sprung rhythm, sestets, and octets, may be confusing to those who are unfamiliar with serious study of formal poetry. That said, it remains an intriguing thriller to the end.

An engaging, if sometimes dauntingly complex, whodunit.