(2006) Paul Christopher, The Lucifer Gospel (Onyx)
Paul Christopher is one of the noms de plumes of Canadian thriller author Christopher Hyde (detailed information on Hyde's novels, with some biographical information, can be found here). Hyde wrote more than a dozen spy and technothrillers in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. In 2005 he began publishing a series of archaeological thrillers featuring a heroine, Finn Ryan, under the Paul Christopher pseudonym. In these four novels, Finn is a young, brilliant art historian and archaeologist who gets caught up in quests for hidden treasures—Michelangelo's notebook, a lost Rembrandt, an Aztec Codex, a secret gospel—with a series of handsome and daring male sidekicks.
After the four Finn Ryan novels, Hyde/Christopher turned to a series featuring a retired Army Ranger named John "Doc" Holliday who gets entangled in a centuries-old Templar conspiracy. Hyde/Christopher has so far published nine novels in this series returning, in the most recent, Secret of the Templars, to the Gospel Thriller genre. With the Templar series, Hyde/Christopher has achieved international notoriety.
Hyde also wrote a trio of novels in the mid-90s under the pseudonym A.J. Holt, featuring strong women characters who seek justice outside of the law.
The "Lucifer" of the title refers, in the course of novel, to many things: a gospel that might "betray" the truth about Christ; a legendary legion led by the centurion who witnessed Christ's crucifixion; and Lucifer of Cagliari and fourth-century debates over Arianism and the status of Christ as God. None of these Lucifers is coherently connected to the others in the novel (suggesting, perhaps, the title preceded the plotting of the book).
Heroes: Finn Riley, a beautiful and brilliant archaeologist on a job in the Middle East who teams up with a Virgil rugged, polyglot pilot and mercenary when they stumble upon a conspiracy to find a lost gospel (also, in the past, benign Templars/Knights of Malta)
Villain: Rolf Adamson, a handsome, reclusive U.S. billionaire and amateur archaeologist, a hyper-Christian patriot who links religious and nationalist extremism together (also, in the past, Nazis)
Gospel: A seemingly authentic account written by Jesus after he survived his crucifixion, living as a monk in the Egyptian desert; it was transported, with Jesus' remains, to a secret Coptic crypt in central Illinois; the tomb is destroyed at the end of the novel and Finn tosses the "Lucifer gospel" into the sea, unread
Reviews
Written before Christopher hit it big with his Templar series, The Lucifer Gospel was not widely reviewed at the time of its publication, even though it must have capitalized on the success of The Da Vinci Code to some extent: early reviewers at both Goodreads and Amazon make the comparison explicitly.
