Get ready for the thrill ride of the season. I just read BLOOD OF THE LAMB by Sam Cabot, and I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. That rarely happens to me, but this is an exceptional novel by any standard. By the standard of “summer thrillers,” it’s an instant classic.

“Sam”

Full disclosure: “Sam Cabot” is a first-time author, but he’s also a pseudonym, the pen-name of two people working together, English professor/scholar Carlos Dews and multi-award-winning mystery writer S. J. Rozan, and I know both of them. In fact, one of them is a close friend of mine. But that didn’t prepare me for my surprise on reading this book. If anything, I was even more surprised than I might have been. I didn’t know these people had such deviously clever minds when it came to putting together a big thriller in an international setting. This is soooo not like them! Well, obviously, it is like them–it’s them.

I was so impressed, I immediately wrote a rave review and posted it on GoodReads and Amazon, and I’m reprinting it here in my blog:

“UNHOLY SECRETS”

Wow! This is a terrific thriller. Set in present-day Rome, it involves Father Thomas Kelly, a young Jesuit priest, and a mysterious woman named Livia Pietro in a search for a missing Vatican document known as the Concordat. This document is a secret agreement made hundreds of years ago between the Catholic Church and a shadowy group known as “Noantri” (translation: “we others”). The man who stole the Concordat in the 1800s concealed it somewhere in Rome just before he was murdered, and he left behind a complicated series of clues to its whereabouts. Thomas and Livia are following the clues, hoping to find it. He’s working for the Church, but she has a very different agenda…

So, who are these “others” who made the secret pact with the Church? Where is the document hidden? Why did someone go to such elaborate lengths to conceal it? And why are so many people–past and present–willing to kill for it? As the body count rises, the biggest question of all is: What’s going to happen to Thomas and Livia, if and when they find it?

I love literary suspense, and this is just my kind of book. It’s along the lines of THE DA VINCI CODE, but the plot (which includes a supernatural element) is even more surprising than that bestseller. As for the big secret at the center of the mystery, a word of warning: it’s definitely controversial. I don’t have a problem with that, but some people might. I can’t wait for the next Sam Cabot book! Highly recommended.

So, that’s the big news. BLOOD OF THE LAMB is available everywhere, in hardcover and e-book. Grab a copy and see what all the fuss is about. Enjoy!