No style to the prose, no nuance to the characters. Can any of it be taken seriously? Not a prayer.
A former US ambassador to the Vatican (Flynn) and a bestselling storyteller (Moore: The Green Berets, 1965, etc.) weave an unlikely tale about a Cape Cod family man elected the 265th pope.
With John Paul II gone, the College of Cardinals in Rome, charged with choosing his successor, finds itself deadlocked. The favorites: Vatican secretary Ireland’s Cardinal Robustelli, Cardinal Comiskey, and Africa’s Cardinal Motupu. Each has his powerful, intractable supporters, and with each ballot the hope for compromise grows dimmer. Then, as a joke (cardinals can be as silly as anyone else), one of the conclave votes for Bill Kelly. That’s right, Cardinal Comiskey’s close friend Father Bill Kelly, a laicized priest who got married and subsequently fathered four children. The laughter turns hollow when it develops that enough waggish cardinals have put Kelly’s name on their ballots to secure him the election. Still, surely Kelly will let them off the hook, won’t he? Cardinal Comiskey predicts that he will and ordinarily would have been right—except there’s been an epiphany. The Blessed Virgin has appeared to Bill, he tells the bemused cardinal, with a message from her son. Divinely inspired, then, Bill opts for becoming Peter the Second. Almost at once, however, his warm-hearted approach earns him a sobriquet, just plain “Pope Bill.” Journeying to Africa, he takes a stand against poverty. He tells the Jews and Arabs how to solve the Middle East crisis and the Irish how to achieve lasting peace. Sweet-natured and innately wise, he never sets a pontifical foot wrong. And when, tragically, after only an eyeblink of Pope Bill’s tenure, the white smoke goes up again, the 266th knows he’s got a tough act to follow.
No style to the prose, no nuance to the characters. Can any of it be taken seriously? Not a prayer.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26801-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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