The Order

Just what I needed, after reading several more demanding books, was this fast moving thriller about a plot to take over the papacy by an ultra-conservative semi-secret society. I have read a couple of other books by Daniel Silva--the first in the "Gabriel Allon series" The Kill Artist, and a later one in the series, The English Girl, both of which I enjoyed. This is the 20th book in the series, and although it helps to have some familiarity with the series just for character development purposes, I found this book no less compelling in spite of not reading them in order or in great numbers. Gabriel has become the director general of Israeli Intelligence services and so works constantly. His wife, Chiara, must plot with the Prime Minister and Gabriel's co-workers to engineer a much needed vacation in Venice with their two young children. The children's maternal grandparents also live there, giving Gabriel and Chiara the possibility of time alone as well. But fate or bad actors intervene when the Pope suddenly dies and Archbishop Luigi Donati, the Pope's devoted private secretary, comes to Allon with his suspicions of foul play.  The Swiss guard who normally stood outside the Pope's quarters has disappeared as has a letter the Pope was in the process of writing to Gabriel Allon.  "'While researching in the Vatican Secret Archives, I came upon a most remarkable book . . . ,' the pope begins his letter to Allon, and the whereabouts of that book--the suppressed Gospel of Pontius Pilate, in which the Roman prelate contradicts the New Testament's version of the events leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus--drive the action here, as Allon and Donati track the secretive Order of St. Helena, a far-right Catholic society with a plan to hijack the papacy (think The Manchurian Candidate). Can Allon both save the Catholic Church and, with an assist from Pontius Pilate, help to undo the church's legacy of anti-Semitism?" (Booklist)

Kirkus calls it "Engaging and deftly paced." I call it perfect pandemic reading!

Poison

I have been unable to find a home page for author Sara Poole although the publisher has a page for her. This is a well written historical novel set in 1492 as Rodrigo Borgia is pulling the strings to try and obtain the Papacy. Francesca Giordano has just murdered a man in order to take his place as the Borgia family's official poisoner. She is still young--in her late teens--but has been at the side of her widowed father, the former poisoner for the Borgias, and learned his herb craft and more. To explain, the poisoner's job is technically to keep the family safe from efforts to kill them through poisoning, which was apparently a popular means of getting rid of one's enemies. But she has also just seen her father die from a brutal beating and feels that patriarch Rodrigo Borgia has acted insufficiently to find the killer or killers. Only if she is in a position of power can she assure her own future and possibly find those responsible. So she kills the Spaniard that Borgia has hired to replace her father and presents herself to Borgia as the replacement. Her audacity and competence, which could have as easily gotten her executed, apparently strikes a cord with Rodrigo and she is now official.
Little does she realize what Borgia had had her father working on before he died. When Francesco attempts to track down her father's final diaries, she is led to the Jewish ghetto of Rome, where the exiles from the Inquisition in Spain are overcrowding an already intolerable situation of filth, starvation and disease. The people she meets there become real to her as she learns that the current Pope plans to sign a similar edict evicting them not only from Rome, but from all Christian lands. It would mean certain death for thousands. If Borgia became Pope, however, the Jews would be spared--if only because he needs the money of wealthy Jewish merchants to buy his way into office once Innocent is dead.
This book is noteworthy for its more sympathetic portrayals of Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia. I have now ordered the HBO series, The Borgias, from Netflix to see how they portray this infamous family. Excellent creation of time, place, characters and political intrigues. If you weren't put off the Catholic church before, this may change your mind. Corruption does not begin to describe the machinations of cardinals and pope. I am keen to read the two subsequent novels in the series.

The Quest

I have read a few other books by Nelson DeMille including Charm School, Gold Coast, Lion's Game, General's Daughter, and Night Fall, but I found this book much less satisfying. Two journalists and a photographer are in the middle of the bloody revolution Ethiopia underwent in the mid-70's. They encounter a dying priest who was held prisoner for 40 years because, he says, he saw the real Grail and and was healed by it in the Black Monastery. The three are captured and only the whim of a psychopathic Marxist general decides whether they live or die a slow and painful death. Unbelievably, after they are let go, they decide to return in search of the Grail. Two of them, the older veteran war journalist Frank Mercado, and the young female photographer Vivian Smith, his on-again-off-again lover, are true believers. Frank Purcell, the younger journalist, is skeptical, but decides to go along and help them. They are aided in eventually finding the Black Monastery by Colonel Gann, an English military adviser to the now former ruling family of Ethiopia descended from Haile Selassie. This was a rewrite of an earlier book by DeMille, and it lacks the narrative pull of later books, IMO.  However, it was, for me, an eye-opening look at the beginnings of the Civil War in Ethiopia, and also of its historical significance as a possible home of both the Ark of the Covenant and the Grail.  This was all new information for me and so satisfying on that level.

Time and Chance

I picked this historical novel by Sharon Kay Penman from the sale table because I had liked a couple of her historically based mysteries (e.g., The Queen's Man). Penman is a competent historian (an Author's Note details the liberties she has taken with history and discusses some of her sources) and a fine craftswoman as a writer. I became absolutely engrossed in this story, which begins two years into the reign of Henry II, 1156, and continues until 1171, shortly after the murder of Thomas Becket. Henry and his equally famous queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, come to life as flesh and blood people with charismatic and strategic skills, as well as human failings. Eleanor is as astute a politician as Henry and so it chafes her and echoes down the years when Henry ignores her advice against elevating Thomas Becket from Chancellor to Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry and Thomas have been of the same mind for years and made a nearly irresistible alliance in bringing a fragmented England, as well as significant parts of France, into a more cohesive kingdom. Henry desires to bring the Church to heel in his quest for control and lawfulness, and sees putting his ally Thomas into the most powerful position in England as a brilliant strategic move. Eleanor has never trusted Thomas, and when he experiences a religious conversion after taking holy orders, her distrust is validated. Henry feels betrayed and the feud between the two men continues to escalate until Thomas is living in exile. When the Pope pressures for reconciliation, Thomas returns to England, not the least bit repentent or conciliatory and immediately takes actions that enrage Henry once more. In the heat of the moment, Henry speaks rashly against Thomas and some young noblemen take it upon themselves to rid the king of this troublesome man. Eleanor is the mother of Henry's eight children--the 2nd oldest of whom, Richard, is to become the Lionheart. She is also the force that holds the kingdom together when Henry is off fighting. Eleanor and Henry have shared not only a bed, but ambition and visions for empire, and she feels betrayed by Henry's installing a young concubine in their favorite home in England, Woodstock. As her friend Maud advises, you must take Henry as he is or learn to love him less--and Eleanor chooses the latter. They have lived mostly apart when Henry was off putting down various rebellions, now they live separately because she can hardly bear the humiliation he has foisted upon her. There is apparently a previous novel about Henry and Eleanor, When Christ and his Saints Slept,  as well as a sequel, Devil's Brood. Penman has a substantial body of work, including a 2-part series about Richard the Lionheart, several other tales of English rulers, and her mysteries. If you like historical novels, you can't go wrong here .

Wild Penance

Vivid and well-develped character in protagonist Jamaica Wild, a BLM resources protection agent who would just as soon go to work on horseback as her jeep. And in this book, which is actually a prequel to the previous 3 books in author Sandi Ault's series, she gets to do just that.  She is assigned by her boss to partner with a Forest Service ranger--her future lover, Kerry Reed--to patrol an area that has been vandalized by thieves cutting wood illegally. She has to camp out and ride at night as that is obviously when the culprits cut fences and drive in to harvest. One morning, while running along the canyon rim, she sees a van on the bridge over the Rio Grande. It stops. Two persons wrestle something out of the back, carry it to the edge, and drop it several hundred feet to the river below. The object they threw off the bridge is a giant cross, and there is a man tied to it. The cross, the stripped victim wearing only a loin cloth, and the black bag over the victim's head all suggest this was done by the Penitentes, a controversial group of Catholics who believe in purification through physically damaging self-punishment. At Easter, they re-enact the Crucifixion, and one of their members takes the place of Christ on the cross. But they never throw them in the river, and this man, who turns out to be a priest who has been studying the Penitentes, was dead before he was tied to the cross. Serendipitously, Jamaica has also been studying this group as she has come across several of their sacred places in off-the-beaten-path locations on BLM land. As Jamaica pursues answers to who the victim was, and why he was killed, someone is trying to kill her. This book also introduces the curandera, Esperanza, who will figure prominently in many of the other books as a spiritual guide and healer for Jamaica. At the very end of the book, when Jamaica is on leave to recover from a wound to her shoulder, we find out how she comes to be the adoptive mother of Mountain, the wolf pup. Highly recommended series for character, plot, setting, and learning about the culture of Native Americans. See also my posts for Wild Indigo, Wild Inferno, and Wild Sorrow.

The Beautiful Mystery

     I always awaits the next Louise Penny with delicious anticipation and pre-ordered The Beautiful Mystery so as not to have to wait an extra minute. Right away I was immersed in her masterful ability to make her characters come alive and create the place for the story. She has delivered another bombshell with this installment in the Inspector Gamache series, and this time it hits even closer to home than when one of our favorite innkeepers was arrested for murder. Two parallel tales unwind here, both dealing with fraternal orders, both dealing with power and how it can be used for good or ill, specifically how some will use their power to try (and sometimes fail) to protect, while others will twist the less powerless to their will. She is so effective at conveying this, that I was even led to doubt...
     The Gilbertine monks have hidden in the backwoods of Quebec for hundreds of years, first escaping the Inquisition and later just the world. They have taken a vow of silence, but ironically are known for their exquisite renditions of Gregorian chants. And now the world knows where they are, for the Prior and choirmaster persuaded them to release a recording and it has rocked the world. People have come seeking them and been repeatedly sent away from this isolated and fortress-like monastery.  But the Prior has been murdered and the Abbot is in crisis because he failed to foresee how the growing rift in his community could come to this. Gamache and Beauvoir come to stay and find out who committed this crime against God and man. The conflict among the monks centered around whether or not they should make another recording. The Abbot wants to preserve the community as it has been, while the Prior wanted to make the recording...and perhaps had another agenda as well.
     We can rely on Gamache, who is in thrall to the chants, to find the killer no matter how painful it will be to the community. But the sabot thrown into the works is when his arch enemy, Superintendent Francoeur, shows up. So begins a game of cat and mouse with the highest stakes in play. I usually don't hesitate to reveal the ending, and indeed the murderer is caught, but I can't bring myself to talk about the really important things that transpire here. If you haven't read the previous 7 books, you can still read this...it will stand on its own. But you will miss some of the nuance and gut-wrenching significance of the conclusion.