Catholic Church Sect and relics and fertility clinics ( )

Futuristic medical technology collides with fundamentalist religious fanaticism in this glacially-paced “thriller” that takes its hero on a painstaking search to locate and save victims targeted by an evil force he doesn’t understand.

Most readers, however, will have figured out the salient points of the big reveals long before protagonist Joe Lassiter gets there – especially if they’ve read The DaVinci Code. This makes it somewhat difficult to believe that Lassiter is a fabulously rich and powerful figure in the information game – the go-to guy for individuals, corporations, and governments who need deep intelligence on a variety of topics.

Lassiter’s search for the truth behind the murder of his sister and her son sends him hopscotching through much of Europe. There he seems to spend much of his time throwing around inexhaustible amounts of money, checking in and out of hotels, hanging around trattorias, and drinking coffee, when he’s not being menaced by shadowy forces intent on fatally ending his hunt.

There are a couple of scenes where the action gets fast and deadly, but much of the novel is a slog. ( )

Mientras las dudas y las preguntas cubren las cenizas de sus únicos familiares, Joe Lassiter se vale de su moderna empresa de investigación para ir más allá de las explicaciones que le puede dar la policia. Ir más allá, sin embargo, significa ser dueño de un secreto guardado más de dos mil años y por el que, de salir a la luz, mucha gente estaría dispuesta a matar.

A priest in a small village in Italy hears the confession of a doctor that sends the priest to the Vatican immediately. Joe Lassiter has a large, successful, private investigative agency. Life is good. And then his sister and her young son are killed in a blast that burns their home to the ground. The fire was professionally set. Then he learns they were killed before the fire. Why? She was an NPR producer with a very ordinary life. This very well crafted story that is gripping until the last word. ( )

I almost abandoned this one early on when the 'bad guys' were revealed to be a traditional Catholic order. This is not the first time I've come across this in fiction. Dan Brown is the worst and most famous offender on this front having heaped nothing less than calumny on the pious society of Opus Dei, but there have been others. The authors names escape me because I tossed the books as soon as the writer's bigotry against traditional Catholics became apparent. It puzzles me to no end why so many writers go out of their way to dream up evil acts for traditional Catholic priests, monks and nuns in their stories to commit when the news is chock full of real evils committed by modernist and liberal Catholics. (For instance, with two notable exceptions, every priest known to have abused an altar boy has been a celebrant of the Novus Ordo Mass and not the ancient Tridentine Rite.) This book's author shares the irrational need to associate all things pre Vatican 2 with silly superstition, banal bigotries and of course, anti-science hysterics. He at least had the decency to invent his own 'traditional order,' The Umbra Domini, rather than heap abuse on a real life traditional Catholic society.

Despite this grave flaw, I pressed forward with this tale because 1) It was both a well-written and well-paced thriller and 2) I was curious to learn what the story's sci-fi hook would be (this too did not disappoint.) ( )