ASSASSIN’S MANUSCRIPT

A former CIA assassin turned minister races to stop a Byzantine terrorist plot in Carl’s thriller.

Top CIA hit man Adam Hunter’s final assignment went horribly wrong, resulting in the deaths of several innocent people (including his wife, Emma) instead of the intended target. Trying for a clean break from his past, he’s living a new life as a Protestant minister in a small Tennessee town near the Smoky Mountains, secretly struggling with guilt he can’t let go of and pining for lawyer Renie Ellis, who doesn’t know that he accidentally killed her fiance. A former colleague, Conrad Docherty, forces Adam into one more mission by threatening a close friend. To complete the mission, Adam must deliver a missing manuscript page from the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest and most important copies of the Christian Bible, to the Vatican. The codex itself, taken from an ancient monastery in Egypt in the 19th century, is supposed to be in the British Museum, but Conrad has secretly arranged to steal it and sell it to the Russian Mafia, working with a terrorist mastermind known only as The Bedouin, who’s setting in motion a horrifying plot that will “make September 11 look like a picnic.” Meanwhile, the gentle, liberal Pope’s scheming right-hand man, Cardinal Lorenzo Carbonari, who hopes to succeed him and fears the manuscript could wreak havoc in the church, enlists his Sicilian Mafia connections to stop Adam from completing the mission. Pursued by assassins from the Smokies to Washington, D.C., Rome, Egypt, and Jerusalem, Adam races to decipher the meaning of the manuscript, prevent an international terrorist attack that could derail the global peace process, and protect Renie after Conrad also sends her to Rome. Subplots featuring top U.S. government officials, the secretary at Adam’s church, and a wealthy Greek shipping heiress who’s obsessed with the codex further complicate the narrative.

Carl is the author of several nonfiction books on religious topics; this is his first novel. His writing style is direct and informal, with vivid action scenes and touches of humor: A crowd on a rainy day is “a mushroom field of umbrellas popped up over a trench coat convention.” Despite his somewhat far-fetched career path, Adam is likable, always trying to do right even if that means performing CPR on a mortal enemy, and his romance with Renie softens his tough, no-nonsense persona. The minor characters are implausible (including a professor of classical Greek who’s never published anything and another professor of classical languages turned Mafia hit man) or one-dimensional, such as the Russian gangsters, a Mafia don, the British Museum guards, and a German-hired assassin. From brushes with death to helicopter rescues to high-speed car chases, things just keep happening, one after another, in quick succession without much foreshadowing or explanation, creating a narrative that’s fast-paced but sometimes confusing and less suspenseful than it could be. For readers willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story, Carl’s debut thriller offers action-packed entertainment.

An entertaining thriller with an overly convoluted plot.