Action fans will find plenty to love here, from gunfights and murder sprees to moral dilemmas.
In Keating’s (The River, 2014, etc.) latest thriller, the pastor/man of action returns, this time caught up in murder and deceit surrounding an independent baseball league in New York.
Pastor Stephen Grant is one of the chaplains asked by billionaire and minor league baseball team owner Mike Vanacore to pray with the players before home games. Mike’s also hired a security team to extract religiously persecuted Dawud Wasem from Iraq so he can convert to Christianity and join Mike’s team in the New York Summer League of Professional Baseball. But a fight over the construction of new ballparks may be the reason the Streit brothers, working for an unknown party, are snatching people for info before brutally murdering them. And when someone enters the U.S. for revenge regarding Dawud’s escape, Stephen, a former SEAL and CIA assassin, may have to pick up his guns once again. The author packs a lot into this frantically paced novel: the Streits are killing people left and right; Stephen’s economist wife, Jennifer, tries to prevent the McGowans from losing their land to the ballparks; and a raft of action sequences and baseball games are thrown into the mix. The multiple villains and twists raise the stakes. As a recurring protagonist, Stephen does surprisingly little. The formidable Paige Caldwell leads the security team in the hunt for the murderers, while the pastor’s most significant contribution doesn’t really happen until near the end, when he races to thwart yet another assassination. Stephen’s even outshined as a preacher: it’s Pastor Zack Charmichael who counsels one of the troubled baseball players. Regardless, Stephen remains an engaging and multifaceted character: he may still use, when necessary, the violence associated with his former professions, but he at least acknowledges his shortcomings—and prays about it.
Action fans will find plenty to love here, from gunfights and murder sprees to moral dilemmas.Pub Date: June 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5141-3761-1
Page Count: 372
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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