β Scribed by Brad Meltzer
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Bestseller Meltzer (_The Book of Fate_) deserves credit for an audacious conceitβwedding the biblical fratricide of Abel by his brother Cain with the unsolved 1932 homicide of the father of Jerry Siegel, the creator of iconic comic book hero Supermanβbut the results are less than convincing. A highly tenuous link between the two murders revolves around the mysterious weapon Cain (the world's greatest villain) used to kill his brother. One of numerous theories is that the weapon was a divine book containing the secrets of immortality. After coming to the aid of a shooting victim, Calvin Harper, a homeless volunteer working in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., soon finds himself hopelessly caught up in a life-and-death quest for the ancient artifact that includes the obligatory secret societies, Nazi conspiracies, enigmatic villains and cryptographic riddles Γ la The Da Vinci Code. A glut of two-dimensional characters and a plot riddled with coincidences don't help. (Sept.)
Copyright Β© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Adult/High SchoolβMeltzer builds suspenseful fiction on a previously little-explored historical nugget: Jerry Siegel, the teenage creator of Superman, lost his father in an unsolved murder in 1932. The author offers a compelling theoretical solution by way of an adult protagonist who is dealing with his conflicted feelings about his own father. Cal works for a rescue mission, picking up vagrants in need of shelter, when he stumbles across a man who turns out to be the father who abandoned him in childhood. The two men join forces in pursuit of what they believe is the lost Book of Cain, the weapon used in the Bibles original murder scene. Meltzer invokes multiple viewpoints as Cal, his father, a mysterious young woman who seems to have befriended the father, a rogue ex-cop, and a hot Federal agent converge on Cleveland in search of the biblical treasure. Teens with a taste for international conspiracies, religion-spouting bad guys, and identity-switching will enjoy this fast ride that leaves some solid and intriguing questions in the wake of its driving plot. Suggest this one to kids who enjoy the likes of Dan Brown, as well as superhero comics._βFrancisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia_
Copyright Β© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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