As a life-long non-believer, I went into this novel with a slightly jaundiced eye. Familiar with Caldwell’s capable writing from a previous novel and intrigued by the many positive reviews, I nonetheless was wary of the strong religious context of this mystery. Unfamiliar as I am with the history of the Gospels, I wasn’t sure what to expect but I must confess (no pun intended!) that I came away with a more profound appreciation for the history of Christianity and a fair degree of satisfaction at a mystery well and truly drawn.
A brief outline: Christianity has been split for a thousand years or more between the Eastern and Western churches. Some within the Vatican seek unification, while others want to prevent it at all cost, especially since the Pope is not recognized as the head of the Catholic Church by the Eastern Orthodox. Enter Ugo Nogaro, one very smart and very obsessed curator of a new Vatican exhibit being prepared that is supposed to change church history. Nogaro is convinced he has proof that the famous Shroud of Turin, dismissed earlier as a fake, is in fact the real thing. Then he discovers that the Shroud had actually been stolen from Constantinople during the Crusades and presented as a Western relic. The pro-unification forces—including the Pope—see this as an opportunity to both apologize for the Crusade and the theft, giving impetus to the unification effort.
Before the exhibit opens, however, Nogaro discovers something else and is killed for it. Two brothers living in Vatican City—one a Greek Catholic priest and one a Roman Catholic priest—have been working with Nogaro on the exhibit, but elder brother Simon, who works for the Secretariat (otherwise viewed as the “black ops” wing of the Vatican) is found standing over Nogaro’s body and is swiftly arrested by the Vatican authorities. Younger brother Alex violates protocol by frantically searching for answers, drawing threats to himself and his five-year-old son (yes, Greek Catholics can marry and have children). Alex is the narrator of the story, and takes us on an amazing journey of the nooks and crannies of both the Vatican itself and of the history of the Gospels, whose discrepancies lie at the heart of solving this mystery.
There are certainly moments in the novel which drag, and if you aren’t willing to delve headfirst with Alex into the texts of the Gospels, you’re going to have trouble with The Fifth Gospel. But if you stick with it, I suspect that you’ll come away—as I did—with a sense of awe at the scope of history being treated and at the (often dirty) complexity of church politics. I wasn’t converted, but I did come away with a real appreciation of Caldwell’s achievement.
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