Good mystery where you don't know who's telling the truth or who's a liar. ( )

Always on the lookout for books in the "theological thriller" genre, I picked this one up ready for the "roller-coaster of a read" promised by one reviewer somewhere. Well, that it was, because the pace was so fast, but to be brutally honest, I just didn't like it. It started out well, with lots of promise and kept me interested, but when it takes me four days to read a novel like this, there's a reason. I kept picking it up, reading it, and putting it back down. Normally books in this vein might last overnight if they're really good.

brief synopsis; no spoilers:

The story opens back in the 15th century in a monastery which is under attack. It seems that a group known as the Knights of St. Clement (a Christian group under the auspices of the Vatican) is an enemy of and sworn to destroy the group known as the Gnostic Observatines, an order based on the monasticism of St. Francis of Assisi. Flash forward to the modern day, where a father is expecting to reunite with his son. The father, Dexter Shaw, tries to convince his son Braverman (Bravo) to use his training as a medieval scholar and work with him; Bravo already has a job in Europe and wants no part of his dad's work life. One thing leads to another, Dexter is killed and leaves Bravo a safety deposit box full of miscellaneous items -- all which serve as a cyper to unravel to guide Bravo to a "cache of secrets" which had been in Dexter's keeping. It turns out that the medieval war is not over quite yet; another group wants to lay their hands on this cache of secrets for sinister reasons.

Sounds right up my alley, but wait. I was looking for a good thriller -- you know...who's the traitor, that sort of thing but figured it all out very quickly. And I just hate when scholarly types become transformed into a lean, mean killing machine, out of keeping with their characters. The plot is a bit different than other books like this, and that made the book interesting. That was a plus here.

Would I recommend it? Well, I'd say give it a try if you like this sort of thing, but having read tons of this genre, it's not at the top of my list. ( )