This particular psalter is over 1,000 years old. Nay, nearly 2,000 years old, for in the ninth century, it was written over the words of a first-century heretical gospel … a copy of the Book of Thomas the Contender from the Ebionites … as a means of secretly preserving the words of an original apostle. The story takes place half in the ninth century and half in the twenty-first century, when the original gospel is finally restored. It’s a thriller that escalates in both story lines to an unexpected finish.

This is a Da Vinci Code twin, complete with a Vatican setting and a few jabs at the Church, but without the sensationalism. The conversation is well-written; it draws you into the era. It’s fiction, but well-researched and plausible beneath the story-telling surface.

Definitely recommended.