“Theology, Mystery, and Romance”: A Review of Penelope Holt’s The Angel Scroll

 

(Roundfire Books, 2024). ISBN: 978 1 80341 569 7

Penelope Holt’s new novel, The Angel Scroll, proves that the history meets mystery (or theological-thriller) genre popularized by the likes of Dan Brown, Barbara Wood, Paul Christopher, and Katherine Neville can have at its core a genuine humanness and examination of personal loss without sacrificing the searing pace, relentless intrigue, and globetrotting action its readers love and expect.

The Angel Scroll is replete with the requisite cast of professors, artists, clergy, doctors, researchers, and rare manuscript and documents dealers and collectors that readers of the theological-thriller genre have come to expect and love. The main villain is suitably dark as well, with proclivities that should bring a considerable chill to your spine.

This well-funded, well-connected cast of characters moves between Manhattan, Jerusalem, London, Rome, Milan, Northern France, and other intriguing, exotic locales in search of three paintings and the scroll that gives the novel its name (the latter of which is based on a real artifact, the authenticity of which is in dispute). It is through these religious items that the Prophecy and Destiny of the subtitle come into play—everyone from the Vatican to private collectors want these theological tools for themselves.

The Love of the subtitle enhances the core of the story, which makes the novel unusual and refreshing in the theological-thriller genre, where any romantic interludes tend to be shallow and fleeting. The narrative revolves around Claire, a recent widow and struggling abstract artist who creates one of the three paintings that set the plot in motion. Claire’s sense of loss and an unexpected physical condition are complicators and drivers in her quest for answers, especially when she meets a widower named Richard whose spouse died under much different circumstances than Claire’s.

The success of the novels in this genre depends upon several components: the richness of the archetypal characters, the pacing of action and dialogue, detailed descriptions of the locales (both geographical and architectural), and the interweaving of history with the mysterious/paranormal/theological aspects of the tale of adventure the author is telling. I give Holt high marks for handling all of them well. The Angel Scroll is a rapid read, with an uncomplicated yet engrossing plot. I mean this last bit as a complement—in the storytelling of the past decade, there seems to be a desire and competition among writers to construct overly complex and even convoluted plots as a point of pride.

In the process of creating a novel that accomplishes all of the aforementioned, essential things it needs to, Holt delivers a ticking-clock thriller that pulls from Eastern spirituality, architecture, biblical scholarship and prophecy, Jewish mysticism, and the Druids and Celts, placing it squarely among the works of the luminaries of the history-meets-mystery genre.

What makes the novel so refreshing is that it never strays from the heart-wrenching, very human experience of love and loss that brings its central characters to life.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“A Firsthand Account of Secret Societies”: A Review of 334‰ Lies: The Revelation of H. M. v. Stuhl.

   Translated by Samuel Chong (English trans. June 2021; originally published in German in 2000). ISBN: 9798513274353 In an age of Conspiracy Theory Mania—a mix of those who revel in it and those who completely reject it—there are few subjects that are as thorny and contentious as the idea that there are secret lodges or societies that set the course of geopolitics from the shadows, engineering puppet governments, wars, and catastrophes to subjugate humanity and main ultimate control. From the innocuous fraternal organizations like the Freemasons, to political and economic organizations like the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, and Club of Rome, the idea that a select few are making decisions for billions is one that is often met with anger and fierce recrimination. No matter the “evidence” put forth about odd places like Bohemian Grove and secret satchels with documents outlining the course of wars originating with the Bavarian Illuminati; no
Read more

“ETs Among Us”: A Review of Earth’s Galactic History: And Its Extraterrestrial Connection by Constance Victoria Briggs

   (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-948803-62-5 Over the past several years, through the publication and positive reviews of her Encyclopedia of Moon Mysteries and The Moon’s Galactic History , Constance Victoria Briggs has become a leading authority on the subject of visitations to Earth and the Moon by extraterrestrials. There are two reasons for her ascendancy into this well-deserved, hard-earned position. First, Briggs does exhaustive amounts of research, structuring her books like PhD dissertations (the structural design of MGH and EGH is similar). Second, she remains a hopeful but very staunch skeptic. She is primarily a reporter. She presents the facts and lets the reader do with them what they will, without gloss. In this way, she is like Dr. Michael Salla and Paul Blake Nelson. Although she traverses the same landscapes as the Ancient Alien crowd (one of whom, David Childress, is her publisher), Briggs is the Joe Friday of the bunch: “Just the facts.” In
Read more

“Jung in Larger Context”: A Review of Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung: A Collaboration, by Nan Savage Healy

 (Los Angeles: Tiberius Press, 2017). ISBN: 978-0-9981128-0-0 (paperback) In the interest of Disclosure, I served as the editor for this book. That said, and keeping in mind the relationship of editors like Maxwell Perkins with their writers (in his case, no less than Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and, somewhat synchronistically—to use Jung’s term—Thomas Wolfe), this should not preclude a fair review. Indeed, editors are reviewing books all the time. The difference is, they have the opportunity to provide different eyes to the author’s work before the fact, as opposed to reviewers, who do so after the fact (although I have done a number of pre-publication reviews that precipitated changes before publication). But enough of that. I agreed to the editing contract for the same reason that I am now reviewing Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung— Nan Savage Healy’s detailed and insightful exploration of Jung’s unsung and nearly obliterated collaborator shines a powerful light on Jung, whom I, like
Read more