Book Fortyfive: God's Spy

God's Spy, Juan Gómez-Jurado



What a slog. Everything about this book was difficult, from the preposterous plot to the cardboard characters to, worst of all, the stilted dialog. I'm going to guess that most of that blame lies on the shoulder of the translator. Either he has no idea how English is spoken or the poor fool had no choice but to translate some of the worst and weirdest dialog ever. My favorite bit comes when the two main characters (who are adults, mind you) show up at a delivery driver's house in the middle of the night to ask him some questions. "'I'm Ispettore Paola Dicanti and this is Padre Fowler. Don't stress out; you're not in any trouble and nothing has happened to anyone in your family. We just want to ask you a few urgent questions.'"

What the what?! Does anyone besides thirteen-year-olds actually tell people not to "stress out"?

But then, maybe I wasn't the prime audience for this book. I take it Mr. Gómez-Jurado was attempting to capitalize on the success of The Da Vinci Code and the whole Catholic church, conspiracy theory, hypocritical-men-of-the-cloth type of thing. Also, while there have been some thrillers that I have enjoyed, it takes much more for me to sit through that kind of grizzly murder shit without a good payoff in the end.