I rather enjoyed this novel. Some of it seems a little far-fetched but it is, after all a work fiction. It did set forward some interesting ideas about redemption and Superman and learning to forgive... heavy stuff but the pace was brisk and I enjoyed the plot twists.

The story was clever and enjoyable, and I liked the ending a lot, but the book dragged in places a lot. Maybe it was because I was listening to the audiobook, but the interpersonal narratation got old real quick. ( )

The Book of Lies

The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer is about an introvert name Calvin who on his job picking up homeless people runs into a man enduring a gun shot wound and realizes it is his father that stepped out of his life when he was nine. Calvin eager to reconnect with his father is attacked by a killer looking for an ancient weapon called the book of lies used by Cain to kill Abel in the bible story. Calvin accused for the murders of the killer sets out to find the ancient weapon to prove his innocents. On his quest for the book of lies, he struggles to know who he can trust questioning his own father.
The Book of Lies is an exquisite book because it written in such well detail. Certain parts of the book I felt I was in the story, feeling the anxiety and the suspense first hand. When Calvin was running from the killer, I had to keep reminding myself it wasn’t real. Also Meltzer did a good job using descriptive words and metaphors. One of the metaphors I enjoyed was when Calvin and his father were hovering over a clue to the book of lies and Meltzer described them as “Macbeth witches creating mischief”.
Brad Meltzer did a nice job of creating the characters and having them develop throughout the story. Calvin starting off as an introvert, developed as an outspoken person fighting for things he believed. Also Calvin’s father who developed through out the story started off as a person who did what he wanted and not thinking off the ramifications. As Calvin’s father reunites with his son, he starts to think about his actions and prioritizes differently. It was fun to watch these characters develop and made me think about how people change in real life.
This was a good book because it tackles the importance of symbols. After watching the Da Vinci Code made this an excellent book for me to read. On Calvin’s journey to find the book of lies, he encounters a superman comic that is a map to the book. He uses the symbols on each page of the comic book to rearrange the pages to create a map. Also when they find the book of lies they notice symbol of a moon and a man. The symbol represents a herdsman, which is unique because Cain was a herdsman.
The Book of Lies is a cryptic mystery unraveling each page that is turn. I would say to many pages need to be turn for the story to unravel but would give it a 4 out of 5 stars for the complexity of the plot which provided the reader with a significant amount of entertainment.

In The Book of Lies, by Brad Meltzer, nine-year-old Calvin Harper watches his mother die. His father, Lloyd, goes to prison, and Calvin is alone. Fast-forward 18 years, and Cal works in Fort Lauderdale, picking up homeless people from the street and delivering them to shelters. He and his partner, Roosevelt, respond to a call and find Cal's father, shot it the abdomen with the same gun that killed Jerry Siegel's father in 1932. Jerry Siegel isn't just anyone - he's the boy who created Superman after his father was killed. The mystery deepens when Cal and his father are followed and attacked by a policeman named Ellis, who has a tattoo depicting the ancient markings of Cain - the Cain that killed Abel in the book of Genesis. As Cal and Lloyd follow clues to find a mysterious package that Lloyd was supposed to deliver, they are followed by several people after the same thing - learning the mystery that connects Cain and Superman.

Yep, it's far-fetched. But it's a fun story that reads quickly. Much of the book is written in the first person, from Cal's perspective. I'm often not a fan of first-person narratives, but Meltzer does a pretty good job with it, interspersing third-person narrative when he needs to set the background or get in a bit of history. Meltzer writes pretty well, the plot keeps moving, and the reader is drawn into the story regardless of its believability. ( )

August 06, 2009: I recently had the opportunity to hear Brad Meltzer speak at a conference, and he mentioned how at a book signing he learned a previously unknown fact regarding Superman's creator. And then to read this book and see how he wove in that information, creating a fantastic story behind it, blending his love of comics into a great thriller, was a wonderful experience.
The characters are well-rounded, the dialogue perfect, and the conflict between father and son plays out perfectly at the end. I was a little worried at first about the revelation of what the Book really was, and in less-skilled hands this could have been really corny, but Brad not only made it work, he made it believable and emotionally-resonant.
Highly enjoyable. ( )