Sunday, January 22, 2023

Review of Caldwell, The Fifth Gospel

FOLLOW-UP NOVEL: Review: The Fifth Gospel ( Michael D. Langan, NBC-2).
Ian Caldwell’s second novel, “The Fifth Gospel”, a murder mystery set in the Vatican in 2004, took ten years to write. ...

“The Fifth” comes after Caldwell’s mega-hit, “The Rule of Four”, written with his boyhood friend, Dustin Thomason. Caldwell is a Princeton grad; Thomason a Harvard grad. “The Rule’s” plot concerned, among other things, senior college students at Princeton in 1999 trying to solve a mystery that appeared in a handsome book published in Venice in 1499.

Sounds like an amusing, if predictable, romp through conspiracy-theory-ville. There is an ancient Gospel hidden in the Vatican which maybe mentions the Shroud of Turin! The finder is murdered! Dark forces are at work! All the things!

The novel was published in 2015, so it isn't new. I either didn't hear about it then, or didn't get around to mentioning it. But I just ran across this reprinted review, so here it is.

I enjoyed The Rule of Four. I reviewed it briefly here. See also here.

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