Caravaggio was the greatest artist since Titian, a favourite of Popes and wealthy bankers. But at a timewhen the resurgent Ottoman Empire was planning a second wave of conquest, he discovered a secret sodark that it threatened the very existence of the Catholic Church.The secret endures. Four hundred years later, Declan O’Malley, the first Irish-born Superior Generalof the Society of Jesus, learns that his friend, the German Cardinal Horst Rüttgers, has died in mysteriouscircumstances. With his nephew Liam Dempsey he tries to uncover the truth, bringing him into conflictwith the sinister and virulently anti-Muslim Cardinal Bosani – Camerlengo, or High Chamberlain, of theHoly Roman Church – in charge of the upcoming Conclave to elect a new Pope. As the two prelates grapple, Dempsey finds a bizarre link between Bosani and Caravaggio’smasterpiece, ‘The Taking of Christ’, lost for 200 years until it emerged in 1999 in the unlikely setting of theJesuit house in Dublin. The painting turns out to be more than a sublime depiction of Christ’s seizure in theGarden of Gethsemane; it is also the key to a centuries-old conspiracy of evil. Can O’Malley and Dempsey,aided by the cool and resourceful Maya Studer, daughter of the Commandant of the Swiss Guard, preventBosani from re-igniting a calamitous war between Europe and the Muslim World?
Editorial Reviews
Review
“It would be a grave sin of omission — a “mortaller” even — to pass over Ellis’s elegantly told mystery. A sophisticated intrigue with a taut, measured style, it weaves high politics in holy orders with urgent European political issues, and adds several strands of religious history … an impressive debut that will fascinate readers drawn to Renaissance art, skeletons in church cupboards, and precisely how it is elderly cardinals insult one another.” – Alan Murdoch, The Sunday Times
In his first stab at a thriller, the Northern Irish writer and journalist Walter Ellis is walking on a doubled edged sabre: he has to plot out violent conflict between Islam and Catholicism without giving offence. Luckily, he has, as one of his characters puts it, ‘an Islamic sensibility that guards against prejudice’ …[This is] an engaging, well-written read … Ellis delves deep into the darker chambers of the Vatican to weave deftly a modern detective story with a fictionalised account of the perilous life of Caravaggio in early 17th century Italy.” – Kevin Courtney, The Irish Times
“At a time of geo-political uncertainty, with Europe in disarray and the Catholic church reeling from one crisis to another, with strange goings on in the Vatican and high officials arraigned for theft, the theme is topical enough, and the events just possible enough, as Walter Ellis tells it, to create a compelling narrative … [The author] has handled the parallel sub-plots with skill and efficiency, maintaining tension and a tautness in the narrative which holds the reader’s interest.” – Maurice Hayes, Irish Independent
” … a fascinating novel” – Eamonn Mallie, leading Irish broadcaster and commentator, eamonnmallie.com
“If ever there was a figure for whom the word conspiracy could have been invented, it was Caravaggio. You could say trouble seemed to follow him with the graceful inevitability of an artist’s model slipping out of her robe. Local journalist Walter Ellis gleefully invades Dan Brown territory with this thriller uncovering a deadly artistic secret that threatens a major conflict between the Christian and Muslim world.” – Belfast Telegraph (Books You Should Own)
About the Author
WALTER ELLIS is a journalist who worked as a feature writer and foreign correspondent for The Irish Times,Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times. He is the author of two non-fiction books, The OxbridgeConspiracy, about elitism in British higher education, and The Beginning of the End, a memoir of growing up inBelfast as best friend to the man who would become the INLA’s most ruthless assassin. Both books were widelyreviewed and serialized. The author now lives in New York.
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