It has all the elements of the Da Vinci Code. Conspiracy, Roman Catholic Church, clunky exposition and obvious clues. There's a raid on Temple Mount and a cache of Ossuaries found, there appears to be one missing. Detectives work on it.
In the Vatican, American Scientist Charlotte Hennesey and Italian Anthropologist Giovanni Bersei are summoned and vowed to secrecy about a mysterious stone box. Which the open and find inside bones. The bones of a crucified man.
Now if you've read any of this stuff you'd know where this is going. Charlotte is supposed to have multiple myeloma. Is supposed to be taking Chemotherapy drugs. Now I know from experience that chemo isn't easy, is quite tough on your stomach and if they tell you not to take alcohol it's not for gallery. She's also supposed to have had a catholic education but the gaps of difference between my catholic education ahd hers are just amazing. They also failed to convince me that they were real scientists. Among other things, if you found an ancient parchment or velum scroll and were being hired by the Vatican Library (not to look into the scroll but the scroll was found in the ossuary) you wouldn't wonder what to do with the scroll but would call the librarian right there and then (unless it was past their working hours, but even still, most librarians would be very happy to be dragged out of bed to examine a document that looks like it's early Christian, trust me)
And I don't care how much you need the info, your phone has a camera, don't photocopy the ancient document. At the worst you should have a digital camera of some sort, use it.
Oh and the author failed their research test: p 130 "Straight out of the seminary, Donovan had joined Dublin's Christchurch Cathedral as a resident priest." He's supposed to be a Roman Catholic Priest. If you google it, even without going through to the link (http://cccdub.ie/) you will see, up front and center "Church of Ireland". Why yes, there are non-Roman Catholics in Ireland, a little fact-checking goes an awful long way.
We're not even going near the ending that seriously came at me and made me wince.
Still it did drag me along (yes occasionally kicking and screaming) almost more for the what the hells is he going to do next to the characters. It had the potential to be a good read but it didn't make it. If you liked the Da Vinci Code you may like this but if you hated it this isn't much better.
