The Mithras Conspiracy
Followers of a revived version of Mithraism in contemporary Italy threaten to overthrow the government and destroy the Vatican.
Rome is in chaos. Earthquakes shake the city. The Pope is in a coma. And a Vatican scholar has been found dead in the Tiber.
Detective Marco Leone is about to take a sabbatical when his estranged friend, in charge of organising the Vatican's secret archives, is murdered. Leone stays on to investigate, but the murder is only the first in a series of ritual murders and attacks on specific churches, all built over ancient chapels devoted to the Roman god Mithras.
Leone's research leads him to two American scholars who have discovered a scroll named after a certain Callinicus that, if authentic, could rewrite history.
Born and bred in Chicago, M.J. Polelle is an emeritus professor of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he practiced civil litigation in Chicago before becoming a law professor at De Paul University College of Law and then at the UIC-School of Law where he taught constitutional law. At UIC-School of Law, formerly John Marshall Law School, he co-taught a comparative law course in Parma, Italy with an Italian professor and served as a Special Assistant State’s Attorney for several years.
M.J. Polelle lives in Sarasota, Florida with his wife, Donna, and is inspired by walks along the beach. You may contact him on his website: www.mjpolelle.com.
Comments
Andreu Abuín
Polelle offers a fast-paced, sometimes dizzying novel full of intrigue and action. A little too much, especially in the first half, where the number of characters and situations can leave more than one out of the game and make them give up before the end. However, it is worth carrying on.
There is no shortage of clichés about Rome, Italy, Fascism, Nazism, the Church, the Vatican, la mamma... The characters are a little flat, as Polelle puts all his heart into a plot that he twists to fit a classical structure that is at times too predictable.
Nevertheless, The Mithras Conspiracy is a good action book. Polelle's effort to do his homework and talk about Mithras properly is appreciated. The excesses of the genre can be forgiven, not least because Polelle is one of the few authors who have dared to tackle the subject with a good and sometimes remarkable result.
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