Review: Unfulfilled potential.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 30, 2010
Starting out as a thriller this book slows down as it goes by seems to lose it's original voice.  By the 60% mark I was convinced there could not be a satisfying ending and that stayed with me right up until the unsatisfying ending.It really disappointed me because the book started out so strong.  The premise seems incredibly solid.  What would happen if the Virgin Mary's body was discovered.  Carrie,  Father Fitzpatrick,  Kesev, Emilio...  These are incredibly well written characters and the author begins this story building our interest in each if them with just enough information about them and their motivations to want to know more about them.  But again just past the half way point things begin to come apart.  Our once interesting characters seems to go one dimensional.  Carrie is no longer a complex woman she is more or less capable of focusing only on the Virgin.  Emilio turns into the standard hit man caricature and Fitzpatrick is now like a schoolboy when his girlfriend stops paying attention to him.By the end of the book we have the main characters meeting up with the underdeveloped "bad guy,  right wing politician",  the Virgin and apparently the hurricane manifestation of god.  Oh and god hates religion,  you know even the one his disciples founded and he is an enviromentalist too!The Afterward clears up some of the questions as to why the story began and probably why it unraveled but that of course does not make the book a good read.