Synopsis (from
the publisher):
A remarkable discovery has been made in the far reaches of Kurdistan. A
Western archaeological team has unearthed the oldest human
civilization—older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge. Sent to
cover the story is war reporter Rob Luttrell. He’s just survived
a Baghdad suicide bombing and wants only to return home to his child.
What began as a fascinating assignment quickly turns dangerous as the
site is sabotaged and someone is murdered.
Meanwhile, a Scotland Yard detective is fast on the trail of a series
of grisly killings in the British Isles. As he attempts to unravel
these elaborate acts of violence, he discovers there may be a link to
the site in Kurdistan. The secret to both is an origin and a bloodline
that will challenge everything the modern world knows about the origins
of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
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The Genesis Secret
Non-series
Tom Knox
Viking (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-670-02088-5 (0670020885)
ISBN-13: 978-0-670-02088-1 (9780670020881)
Publication Date: May 2009
List Price: $26.95
— ◊ —
Review: Tom
Knox's debut thriller, The Genesis
Secret, which combines a historical quest with a modern murder
mystery, has a promising start but ultimately disappoints.
Rob Luttrell, a reporter in the Middle East for a British newspaper, is
known for accepting the most dangerous assignments. But when his editor
asks him to cover an archaeological dig in a remote area of
southeastern Turkey he's disappointed. Still, he feels a break from the
action may be just what he needs. Not long after his arrival the lead
archaeologist on site, Franz Brietner, is murdered, impaled on a pole
at the dig. Intrigued by why Brietner was killed, Rob presses forward
to get the true story. Back in England, Detective Chief Inspector Mark
Forrester has a series of gruesome murders on his hands. His
investigation leads him to believe the murders were not committed for
the usual reasons, but as random ritualistic killings. He also learns
the culprit may not only be sadistic and cruel, but also brilliant and
cunning and from one of the country's finest families.
For more than half the book, The
Genesis Secret alternates between these two storylines. The
archaeological dig in Turkey is based on a real site that has received
a fair amount of attention in the news, its location being near the
Turkey / Iraq border in the disputed region of Kurdistan. Given the
book's title, it probably isn't giving away too much to say the real
archaeologists and the fictional ones think they've found the Garden of
Eden, a site that is mentioned (in one way or another) in multiple
religions, though its significance differs depending on various
religious interpretations. This part of the story is interesting in and
of itself but isn't really developed much beyond the facts already
published. Though information about the site is not known to have been
written in any form through the ages, a (fictional) "Black Book" is
suspected to hold the key to its existence.
The ritualistic murders in England (and, as it turns out, elsewhere) is
initially a far more intriguing foundation for the book, as far as it
goes. Unfortunately, the inevitable link between the murders and the
archaeological site is a tenuous one at best and is really never
credible. The story subsequently morphs into an oddly unimaginative
action adventure tale that generates little suspense or interest in the
final outcome.
Part of the problem in the final third of the book is that the author
frequently takes convenient shortcuts to advance the plot presumably
assuming the reader won't notice. One of the most glaring of these is a
scholar who has been lashed to a chair, his captors putting "a sweaty
gag around his mouth and tied it ferociously tight, making his lips
bleed as the gag pressed against his incisors." After having a
procedure called the "blood eagle" performed (it's really far too
ghastly to say any more here), he's somehow able to grasp a nearby pen
in his mouth (still gagged) and write an important clue for Rob and
Forrester to follow before he dies. It would be silly if it weren't so
horrific and obviously impossible.
In the end, there's little to recommend The Genesis Secret, which is really
rather unfortunate since its premise seemingly had so much to offer.
Special thanks to Penguin Group for providing a copy of The Genesis Secret for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read The Genesis Secret? How would you rate it?
Non-series novels by this author …
The
Genesis Secret
Viking (Hardcover), May 2009
ISBN-10: 0-670-02088-5 (0670020885)
ISBN-13: 978-0-670-02088-1 (9780670020881)
The
Marks of Cain
Viking (Hardcover), May 2010
ISBN-10: 0-670-02191-1 (0670021911)
ISBN-13: 978-0-670-02191-8 (9780670021918)
Omnimystery keywords for The Genesis Secret ...
Location(s) referenced: England, Turkey.
