Review: Indisputable Proof by Gary Williams and Vicky Knerdy
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 19, 2013
Indisputable Proof is a novel dealing with the search for a venerated religious object stolen from a Roman Catholic cathedral in Spain.  My first question was why is it always the Catholic relics which are so tempting to thieves, but the answer came almost immediately.  The Catholic church is the one with the relics.  Protestant churches don't collect them and so don;t have them available for novelists to incorporate into thrillers.  The chief searcher is Samuel Tolen, a black man with piercing blue eyes.  I was reminded of Arthur Upfileld's blue-eyed black detective in books now long out of print.  Where Boney reads the Book of the Bush with ease, Tolen reads inscriptions and faint markings in ancient archaeological sites.  Since the CIA is being blamed for the theft, Tolen, its best agent has been assigned the task of finding the relict before it has be be displayed publicly in a religious ceremony.  He quickly teams wup with a Spanish policeman and an English female archaeologist and the trio starts out on a search for objects secreted hundreds of years ago by Joseph of Aramethea, on the throry that this somewhat side expedition will help them find the more recently lost item.  The search starts out by finding the tomb of Joseph in, of all places, Costa Rica.  After a great deal of drama and destruction, clues lead them to the Island of Patmos where there is more drama and destruction and a journey to the final site in Egypt.  Meanwhile, an organization of religious fanatics has plotted more destruction when the loss of the relic is publicly acknowledged, and there is a further complication by the offer of a very wealthy man of a large reward  to anyone who can prove that Jesus was truly resurrected and that there is life after death.  The separate strands of the story are skillfully woven together and we learn just how much deception has really taken place.  For those who like complex stories which will keep the eyes glued to the page, this book is recommended.  On the negative side, I felt that the authors had difficulty with irregular verbs and I was also a bit puzzled by the recounting of the Egyptian myth of Resurrection which had Horus as the victem of murder instead of Osiris, his father.  That having been said, ignore my pickiness and readthe book.