The Fifth Gospel: A Novel

The novel concentrated on two brothers, both priests, born, raised and still living in the Vatican State as of 1994, The younger, in the Greek Catholic tradition in union with the Vatican, was married with a five-year-old son. I never read about them performing any priestly duties such as presiding at Mass or hearing Confessions, visiting small Catholic parishes in rural Italy, or taking Communion to the homebound. They seemed wholly tied to their career duties, one as a Roman Catholic Vatican diplomat on track for advancement up the hierarchical ladder, the other, the narrator in awe of his older brother, as a scholar of ancient Scripture texts as well as a doting parent. Their life was complicated by the bizarre death of a casual friend along with the appearance and disappearance of a non-canonical Gospel. I could not relate to the characters or to their circumstance. Nevertheless, we did have a lively discussion about the book and the non-canonical Gospel in my Lifelong-Learning book group. Rosalie L'Ecuyer, Fairbanks, Alaska

Loved it. Since we have been to the Vatican and had a friend who worked there, we could recognize the background. In addition to that, we learned so much more about the Eastern faith and its connection to Catholicism. Character development of the Two brothers--Simon a Catholic priest and Alex an Eastern Catholic priest with a small son--was very complex. Plot had various twists, historical background was excellent, biblical reference was and intriguing look at the four gospels--that make up the 5th gospel--the Diatesseron. For anyone who likes a novel that is wonderfully researched and presented.

It is 1 a.m. and I just finished The Fifth Gospel. I simply could not put it down. I knew nothing about the Catholic Church or the Vatican before reading this book. This is all new to me and I found it fascinating. While I did learn about the complexities of Vatican City, the book is actually a page-turning murder mystery. The characters are interesting- complex people. I thought the book was very well written. I enjoyed it.

Loved it. Since we have been to the Vatican and had a friend who worked there, we could recognize the background. In addition to that, we learned so much more about the Eastern faith and its connection to Catholicism. Character development of the Two brothers--Simon a Catholic priest and Alex an Eastern Catholic priest with a small son--was very complex. Plot had various twists, historical background was excellent, biblical reference was and intriguing look at the four gospels--that make up the 5th gospel--the Diatesseron. For anyone who likes a novel that is wonderfully researched and presented.

It is 1 a.m. and I just finished The Fifth Gospel. I simply could not put it down. I knew nothing about the Catholic Church or the Vatican before reading this book. This is all new to me and I found it fascinating. While I did learn about the complexities of Vatican City, the book is actually a page-turning murder mystery. The characters are interesting- complex people. I thought the book was very well written. I enjoyed it.

I'm Catholic and was expecting so much more. It was tough getting through the beginning and then things picked up a little bit, but I didn't understand what really happens at the end. I guess all was forgiven. If you want to read some great books that intertwine religion, artifacts, worldwide locations, suspense, and thrilling fiction, just read all of JAMES ROLLINS novels! They are magnificent.

I really enjoyed this book, actually, I couldn't put it down. The story is set in the Vatican which is a great place for mystery and intrigue. This book is much more than a gripping mystery. It also a well written and researched history lesson.

I was mesmerized from the moment I started reading this story of two close brothers who are Vatican priests that get accused of even murder. Involving a historical mystery and the consequences would have on two of the world's largest churches. This reader had a hard time putting this novel down.

I was hoping for something in line with The Da Vinci code or the Da Dilva series, but this was just OK, somewhat disappointing. The story is sloppily developed, some areas over inclusive, the end terminates precipitously, as if the author was told by the editor that it was too long and it needed to come to an end, or the author lost interest and decided to just end it.

Interesting setting. The main characters are two brothers from different rites within the Catholic church who live in the Vatican. One of the brothers, a Greek Catholic, has a young son that is being raised within the Vatican city state. Very unusual. However, once you get beyond the setting it is essentially a legal thriller - which is not one of my favorite genres.

I loved this book. It was well-written, exciting, educational, and inspiring all at the same time. The main characters are real people not cardboard cut outs. The issues that divide Roman Catholics from Orthodox are fascinating. I was surprised at how much I learned about the four gospels and the so-called "fifth gospel". Add all of this to a murder mystery and you've got a great book!

I thought he author did a great job in creating believable characters. The interplay between the two brothers and the intrigue in the hierarchy of the Vatican was so interesting. Loved the son Peter. I think the author did a fantastic job of tying all the mysteries together and a very good ending.
Kudos to Ian Caldwell

I really enjoyed this book. There are several layers to the plot. The political house of the Vatican is the backdrop for a well told story. The Shroud of Turin, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics history are part of the story. It is totally engrossing. Like any good book, I did not want it to end.

I'm not sure what book the naysayers were reading but this novel was anything but slow, methodical, or formulaic. Caldwell gives great voice and humanity to his characters and, as a Catholic, a fair and interesting (fictional) story that takes place within the walls of the Vatican. The characters are very real - flawed but compelling. The story was unique and an easy read...I tore through it...would be a good movie if done right.

After reading an excerpt,I was expecting a Da Vinci Code knockoff,but this is not that. It is the story of two brothers,both priests, born and raised within the Vatican (sons of a Greek Orthodox priest ) who are pursuing the truth about the Shroud of Turin in very different ways and for diffrerent reasons. One remains Orthodox,the other becomes Roman Catholic. The fifth gospel is the Diatessaron, an ancient text combining the four known gospels into a cohesive whole while inadvertently revealing the truth about the Shroud. There is a mystery to be solved and that is well done. More interesting is the detail about the inner workings of the Vatican and its power structure and internal agendas. Not a fast read and really more about the family dynamics of the brothers than anything else,its worth reading if you don't mind the somewhat scholarly discussions of the gospel texts. As a non-believer, those were interesting from an historical perspective but sort of a sideline. If you don't expect a fast paced read,it's worth a try. The writing is excellent.

Just a few days ago I told my wife that I wished that the authors of the rule of four would write something new. And them I came upon this book. Beautiful story, wonderfully written, educational. I hope it doesn't take a decade for the next one.

This is a mystery that takes place in and around the Vatican in the time of Pope John Paul. I loved the main character, a Greek priest, and I learned a lot about the history of the Catholic Church. I gave it five stars, even though I thought the plot was kind of far-fetched. It's a very good book overall.

Excellent read twists and turns galore. Story of 2 bothers. Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic, the Pope and 9 Patriarchs. Tied by reverence to the Shroud of Turin and wether it's the shroud of Christ or an elaborate hoax.

not sure where the book left at the end, sequel, maybe, but a bit of a confusing ending at least for me, however having said that I felt that the in depth description of beliefs and interpretations of the gospels and differences of the authors perceptions regarding those authors take on the events during that time were very thought provoking

The universal success of the author Dan Brown's "De Vinci Code" introduced readers to not just a mystery, but one that wrapped the history of the church (specifically the Catholic Church) in a modern conundrum. Since Brown's success with Robert Langston and his search for symbolism in the "De Vinci Code" (and earlier in "Angels and Demons"), others have brought forth tales with connections to the history and the Church. None, in my opinion, as well structured as Ian Caldwell's "The Fifth Gospel".

The story is told through the eyes of Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic who is a Biblical scholar. When his priestly brother introduces him to a friend who is trying to determine the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, it sets forth a series of actions that goes beyond another murder at the Vatican.

The Fifth Gospel is filled with information regarding Christianity. You don't have to immersed in theology to appreciate the historical inter-weavings of the formation of the Bible and the evolution of the Catholic Church. Caldwell expertly uses the modern structure of the papacy and the connections between the Catholics and the Orthodox to present an interesting tale that transcends the crime. There is yet another element that lifts this book, however. It is the presentation of the strength and commitment of complete and unwavering devotion... father to son, brother to brother. It is an uplifting story on many levels.

Read it for the history, read it for the mystery, read it for a better understanding of the conflicts and associations between Eastern and Western religion. By all means, read it.

I was so impressed by this book and could not put it down. As someone who grew up in the Catholic church and had a decade+ of Catholic education, I opened The Fifth Gospel wondering if I would find it dull or even offensive, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Caldwell's research is exciting and weaves some of the most seemingly plain aspects of church history and teaching into a thrilling mystery, breathing new life into topics that had become very ho-hum for me. His characters are rich, complex, and beautifully human. Every page was bursting with intelligence, suspense, and characters that keep pulling you in deeper - loved it!

After wading through a plathora of information regarding life in the Vatican searching for the evasive hidden mystery, finally gave up. I did notice beforehand on the store comments page that it was NOT like "The DaVinci Code" but Since I really enjoy most of Dan Brown's books, was hoping for something equally as engaging. This book was not that - nothing but mind-numbing details on layout of city and devout and sometimes warped practices of people there. Perhaps it will improve if I were willing to invest more time, but I simply can't stand to read on any further.

Reminded me of DiVinci Files or Angels and Demons. Twists and turns, suspense, and a variety of love stories. Some of the reconciliation seems unrealistic, but works, because realistic and belabored would distract from the tempo.

Interesting behind the scenes look at life in the Vatican. Was also intrigued by the storyline involving reading the Gospels as history. Thought the characters were weak, and the plot ultimately disappointing. Lots of build-up, followed by a let-down.

Writes well and initially has a great plot but the ending is so disappointing. It's an."Oh is that what all the drama was over" A lot of theology/Bibleology that concludes that the gospel of John is theologically deep but very inaccurate. He also suggests that the Catholic church, the Orthodox church should unite . More important that the Catholic church has lost its way in wealth and an inept bureaucracy.

The description of the Vatican as a separate but terrible inept country is reason in itself to read the book.

Engaging with non-stop twists and turns. Kept me wondering what was fact and what was fiction! I recommend it to anyone who likes a good mystery as well as the intrigue of Roman Catholocism. Dan Brown has competition.

A huge wast of time. Written as though the author believes the claptrap about the Shroud or would have the reader believe. The story suggests that the Vatican is full of priests not doing much real work except trying to increase the power of the Catholic Church and spending a lot of time fighting each other in the process. We already know that there is an incredible level of corruption within the church, including child molestation and criminal money laundering. In addition, the main character, spends a huge amount of time fawning over his son. I kept thinking, what if he had a daughter instead?

I can accept a slower paced story, but I cannot accept bad theology. This book was highly recommended to me by someone who thought I would like it. Truly, I cannot think of a single person I would recommend to read this book, not my Roman Catholic friends, not any of my Orthodox friends certainly, and not my Eastern Orthodox friends either. I certainly wouldn't want my Protestant friends to come anywhere near it! No one. As an Orthodox Christian I found the author supercilious and belittling. He seems to dream of reuniting the two churches some day. This book certainly will not further his cause.

Is it naïve, arrogant or just temerarious to dare to voice an opinion about a NY Times bestseller that begins with three pages of praise in quotations from professional reviewers, top literary journals and leading writers ? Is it possible to say anything new about this "gripping thriller", this "literary but compulsively readable" "erudite page-turner", this "groundbreaking", "captivating" "Rubik's cube of a novel", "with credible characters, twists and turns of plot and a fascinating theological rationale" ? I will have to content myself with telling you why I could not put it down.

I learned a lot from Ian Caldwell's ingenious story about two brothers who are priests at the Vatican, one Roman Catholic and celibate, and the other Greek Catholic, married and the father of a five-year-old. I was myself a Roman Catholic priest for seven years, who after my papal dispensation became a lay theologian, Religious Education director and a professor of Theology. Later I became an atheist and author of a blog (blindfaithblindfolly.wordpress.com) in which I try to get "Believers on the Brink" to recognize the credulity and wishful thinking that are the foundations of their faith. One of the examples of this credulity is the credence given to the Shroud of Turin. This book's central character, apart from the priest-brothers, is in fact the Church's most famous relic, said to be the burial cloth of the crucified Christ. I have never read such a riveting account of the Shroud's documented and hypothetical history, the mystery of its supposed miraculous origin and the controversy surrounding its authenticity. I cannot reveal here the novel's plot and the author's thesis, but even I did not expect such a development nor such a denouement.

I recommend the book as a superbly written and constructed work of fiction about a real world most of us know only from the outside and from far less credible novels like Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons". One does not have to be familiar with the Bible to appreciate the scholarship behind the novel, nor a bred and buttered Catholic to be intrigued by the inner workings of the world's smallest country and the world's largest Christian denomination, in its relationship with the schismatic Orthodox churches. Centered on the final years of the pontificate of Pope John Paul 2, the novel succeeds - almost - in making us forget that it is fiction. It is one helluva good yarn.

A huge wast of time. Written as though the author believes the claptrap about the Shroud or would have the reader believe. The story suggests that the Vatican is full of priests not doing much real work except trying to increase the power of the Catholic Church and spending a lot of time fighting each other in the process. We already know that there is an incredible level of corruption within the church, including child molestation and criminal money laundering. In addition, the main character, spends a huge amount of time fawning over his son. I kept thinking, what if he had a daughter instead?

I can accept a slower paced story, but I cannot accept bad theology. This book was highly recommended to me by someone who thought I would like it. Truly, I cannot think of a single person I would recommend to read this book, not my Roman Catholic friends, not any of my Orthodox friends certainly, and not my Eastern Orthodox friends either. I certainly wouldn't want my Protestant friends to come anywhere near it! No one. As an Orthodox Christian I found the author supercilious and belittling. He seems to dream of reuniting the two churches some day. This book certainly will not further his cause.

Is it naïve, arrogant or just temerarious to dare to voice an opinion about a NY Times bestseller that begins with three pages of praise in quotations from professional reviewers, top literary journals and leading writers ? Is it possible to say anything new about this "gripping thriller", this "literary but compulsively readable" "erudite page-turner", this "groundbreaking", "captivating" "Rubik's cube of a novel", "with credible characters, twists and turns of plot and a fascinating theological rationale" ? I will have to content myself with telling you why I could not put it down.

I learned a lot from Ian Caldwell's ingenious story about two brothers who are priests at the Vatican, one Roman Catholic and celibate, and the other Greek Catholic, married and the father of a five-year-old. I was myself a Roman Catholic priest for seven years, who after my papal dispensation became a lay theologian, Religious Education director and a professor of Theology. Later I became an atheist and author of a blog (blindfaithblindfolly.wordpress.com) in which I try to get "Believers on the Brink" to recognize the credulity and wishful thinking that are the foundations of their faith. One of the examples of this credulity is the credence given to the Shroud of Turin. This book's central character, apart from the priest-brothers, is in fact the Church's most famous relic, said to be the burial cloth of the crucified Christ. I have never read such a riveting account of the Shroud's documented and hypothetical history, the mystery of its supposed miraculous origin and the controversy surrounding its authenticity. I cannot reveal here the novel's plot and the author's thesis, but even I did not expect such a development nor such a denouement.

I recommend the book as a superbly written and constructed work of fiction about a real world most of us know only from the outside and from far less credible novels like Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons". One does not have to be familiar with the Bible to appreciate the scholarship behind the novel, nor a bred and buttered Catholic to be intrigued by the inner workings of the world's smallest country and the world's largest Christian denomination, in its relationship with the schismatic Orthodox churches. Centered on the final years of the pontificate of Pope John Paul 2, the novel succeeds - almost - in making us forget that it is fiction. It is one helluva good yarn.

Thankfully, this is NOT like The Da Vinci Code; its more in the tradition of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and Name of the Rose; Wilton Barnhardt's Gospel; and the secular works of Elaine Pagels. If you like biblical exegesis (light), a bit of Church history (Catholic & Orthodox) & puzzles within puzzles, you'll enjoy this book. I think the 1 & 2 star reviews are unfair, as this never purported to be a work of biblical scholarship, and if you have no interest in the New Testament or "Church politics" then your bad for buying a 400+ page book with the word "Gospel" in the title. However, unlike Foucault's Pendulum (still the platinum standard, IMHO), I can't rate it a 5 bc the plot is a bit slow; the numerous "crises" the characters face often seem overblown to a secular mind; the central "murder" mystery strains credulity, as the "victim's" parallels to Judas are blatant & pervasive; and the narrative is pretty hypocritical about Church history & ideology.

Although this book is not for hard-core Catholics (i.e., anyone who might be shocked to learn that the Canonized Gospels, esp that of John, are not actually historical), it is still a Catholic Apologia by presenting the Catholic Church (as an institution) to be far more focused on historical truth, learning, and genuine intellectual inquiry than it has EVER been. While crocodile tears are wept over Romans "using Christians as torches," "throwing to the lions," and the other usual litany of 2000-year old grievances, NO mention is made of the MUCH more recent experience of the Inquisition, which has killed thousands of people for such "heresies" as suggesting that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Thus, Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake, and Galileo, who was repeatedly interrogated & kept on house arrest, would be a bit less indulgent of this Catholic self-pity. Also, Christians burned plenty of "pagan" temples and destroyed countless pagan books of secular learning (which had a lil sumfin sumfin to do w/the fact that the West had the Dark Ages while the Arabic world was reaching its intellectual height). So for a book whose entire plot revolves around the search for "historical truth" to omit these "details" strikes me as knowingly disingenuous, but still a good read.

I received a free copy of The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell through Goodreads First Read.

I am a sucker for conspiracy theories. Add religion to the mix, and I am smitten! Give it enough verifiable proof and I am in love! I have among my collection The Rule of Four and was over the moon for the chance to read this book and add it to my library.

Before reading this book, I did a little research on The Shroud of Turin and The Diatessaron. I remember when the carbon dating came out saying that the cloth could not be old enough to be the burial shroud of Jesus, I was a teenager and wanted to believe. I had never heard of the Diatessaron (the fifth gospel), so all of that was new for me. After the whole "Divinci Code" era, I had become obsessed with The Council of Nicea and what we today consider the complete Bible. Don't get me started on the whole Codex issue.... this could go on and on. So, in researching the Diatessaron and the scholars stance on the work, I could see where it would make GREAT fuel for fiction writing.

With this Genre of books, you have to go into it accepting that you are getting a made-up story based loosely on facts. I think people get bent out of shape when they take a story such as this and try to make it real, as if it were history. The fascination with these stories is the grains of truth they portray. How do you make history tell a fictitious story and make it believable?

The story is centered around 2 brothers: Alex and Simon, both priests, one is Orthodox, the other Roman Catholic. During the final days of Pope John Paul II's papacy, an exhibition is being planned by Dr.Ugolino Nogara around certain religious relics. It is the hope of many within the Vatican that this will bring a measure of peace between the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox Church. From the beginning, we know that Dr Ugolino was murdered. The classic plot with this story and others like it is not so much how and who, but it is more focused on why.

In 2005 we know that the carbon dating on the shroud could not be deemed accurate. This is a fact admitted by one of the scientist involved with the initial carbon dating data. For many, it gives the hope that the image is real, that we do have a recorded face to give to Jesus. What is interesting to note, (and you can check your bibles on this one) The accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John don't add up when it speaks of the burial of Christ. That is where the Diatessaron comes in. It is a first century account of the 4 gospels contained in one book. So, now we get to the thick of the plot- which one is the fake and who will kill for/because this knowledge?

I think the book was cleverly written with engaging characters and thought provoking dialog. There is a great sadness paramount in this book. One brother has an insatiable need to save the world, regardless of the cost to himself. The other brother must deal with the struggle to cope with a life of tragedy and pitfalls, while accepting that his career is firmly on a horizontal path. When you expose truth to the world, do you disregard the lives that the truth shatters as collateral damage? OR, do you take a different route, and bury the truth? Just let it evolve into a question for others to answer for themselves, thereby shielding others from the hurt it could cause?

As humans, we all know it is easier to forgive others more so than it is to forgive ourselves. The brothers know that there are ramifications for their actions in the role they played in Dr. Nogara death. It will affect their personal and professional lives as well as their faith. Not only will it alter how they view each other, it will change how they view themselves.

The story is ultimately about forgiveness. I cried through the ending, for what was lost, and what was gained. I was invested in the lives of Simon and Alex.... that is a credit to the author's magic. You can get lost walking through Vatican City while reading this book, even envision the dormitories and buildings of the story. (pssst: You don't even need to be Catholic to understand it!) If you love Dan Brown and Charles Brokaw, you will love Ian Caldwell all the more for the intimacy of his characters.

FIVE STARS GLADLY!

Happy Reading.

Interesting book. It had lots of very interesting information about Vatican City and the inner workings there.
The majority of the story was based on the validity of the shroud of Turin. I was caught between 3 stars and 4. I only give 5 stars now to books that I deem really incredible. In past reviews I was too liberal with the 5 star button and it started losing meaning for me.
This was a good adventure book and maybe on a different day I might have given it 4 stars? It runs along the lines of the Dan Brown books so if you liked those then I imagine you'll like this one. The intrigue is a bit more twisted here and that's where I ran into my dilemma. Hopefully, without giving anything away, I felt a bit manipulated when I got to the end of the story. I felt that with some 50-70 less pages and less storylines it would have been a better book.
Having said that, it was a fun thriller and I would recommend it to those of you who like that genre and particularly those who like Dan Brown and Indiana Jones

Since I'm a huge fan of bibliomysteries, this seems like a natural choice, a mystery relating to the greatest book of all. Though as it turned out the murder investigation/court drama aspect of the book were actually the least interesting, primarily because the setting has so very much overshadowed all other things. Set in Vatican and presented with the meticulousness of detail one might expect from a book 10 years in the making, this is an absolutely fascinating armchair trip into the world's smallest country that, despite its size and miniscule population, has its very own rules and regulations and traditions. There are hierarchies, canons, procedures that are completely different from the world around it in some respects, including the immediate world around which is Rome, Italy. Moreover, the themes here are just as fascinating to explore...the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, history, theology, absolutely absorbing reading. That's all the factual components. The fictional component is a story of two priest brothers, one of whom, our main narrator, Alex,, professes at the beginning of the book that there is nothing he wouldn't do for his older sibling, Simon, and so surely enough his devotion gets tested when Simon stands accused of murder of a scholar. The reasons behind the murder are the finding of the eponymous fifth gospel and what it might means for one of the most famous relics that ever was, one of the inestimable ecumenical power, the Shroud of Turin. Here's where the book slacks, or at least slacks by comparison, some of the crime investigation (which Alex intrepidly takes upon himself) and its dramatic consequences are overdone (operatic, melodramatic?), the pacing is ok, actually, but it comes across slightly overwritten, protracted somehow. Compelling in its own right certainly, but maybe it's just more interesting to read about the day to day life in such a bewilderingly different locale or about the mysteries within the pages of The Good Book and its implications, working out the logistical puzzles of where theology and history blur together. The novel certainly demonstrates the exhaustive amount of research that went into it. It was certainly enormously educational and to me that's mostly what the book added up to, sort of an edifying travelogue in a fictional wrapper. Either way you read it, though, it's worth a read.

4.5 of 5 stars.

After reading the Caldwell and Thomason book <i>The Rule of Four</i> a few years back ($3 in a clearance bin, good deal!), I liked the fact that someone could write a "thiller" novel with actual intellectual heft and relatable characters. (You know, not the silliness of a Brownian "Professor of 'Symbology'" or any of the inanities of Coelho.) Not that this has the density or probity of an Umberto Eco book (there's no deep postmodernist meaning), but it isn't something plodding and Hollywood like a Kellerman or Khoury.

This is a "thiller" novel with actual intellectual heft and relatable characters.

So, to the book. It mixes mostly real things: John Paul II, the Diatessaron, the Turin Shroud, Greek Catholics, Vatican politics, etc. with fictional characters trying to solve the mysterious death of an academic layman who was planning an exhibit on the Turin Shroud at the Vatican. The story weaves between the "present" (well, actually, 2004) and flashbacks to tell the story and fill in all the gaps. The reader inhabits the mind of Father Alexander Andreou (a Greek Catholic priest, look it up), this is a rare first person novel, as he tries to solve the mystery of the murder. Characters include his five-year-old son Peter, his brother Simon (a Roman Catholic priest), the murder victim Ugo Nogara, and a whole host of gendarmes, Swiss Guard, and scads of priests and prelates. Topics include gospels, church law, Vatican politics, the Catholic-Orthodox schism, raising a boy as a single parent, the Shroud of Turin, missing documents, and so forth. It's not as life-altering as the David Baldacci quote on the cover, but all-in-all, an engrossing book with characters you care about, a murder mystery that throws you for some loops, a courtroom drama, a broken heart, and a historical puzzle that grips you (especially if you are interested in the Gospels and the Shroud; I guess it might be more interesting if you're a Catholic, I am not).

I'd recommend.

The curator intended his upcoming exhibit in the Vatican museum to prove the authenticity of the Shroud, based on a newly discovered gospel. Despite the promise of its far-reaching effects, why would anyone want to kill him?

The author welcomes us into a mysterious country we call the Vatican. Here, Roman Catholic priests and nuns live alongside the laity and their families. Here, the public and the secret coexist in open plazas and businesses or unknown tunnels and chambers. Here, Greek Orthodox Father Simon lives with his son and yearns to reunite with his estranged wife. And he wonders what his beloved brother has to do with the curator's death.

This literary mystery is understandably complex, ten years in the research and writing. Caldwell keeps us engaged as we explore a country and a culture that is strange to most readers. Canon law is not like secular law, and I worried how the priests could arrive at the truth behind the curator's death.

I was taken, not only by the drama and unexpected twists in this mystery; I was gratified by the spiritual interpretations Father Simon, as a teacher of gospel, offered. Here is a novel of intrigue and love. It's deep and well worth the read.

What an excellent follow-up to the Rule of Four! Both books are stand-alone mysteries that are in the vein of the Da Vinci Code, but much better. The writing is better, the plotting is substantially more believable, and the books are engrossing. The pace is a bit slower than the DaVinci Code, but that is because there is more to the story. This book is set inside the Vatican. The descriptions of the setting and the details of life in the Vatican City add a great deal to the story. The plot swirls around the Swiss Guard; the political hierarchy of the Catholic Church; the theological and political conflicts between the Roman Catholic and the eastern catholic branches of the church; and more personal conflicts. Much of the plot centers around the differences between the four gospels and amazingly our author makes it interesting and understandable. You will be able to follow the plot regardless of your religion or your level of religious education. The characters are multi-dimensional. I found them to be believable and by and large to be people that I cared about, even in such an unfamiliar setting. If you have been to the Vatican, you will find it very easy to picture all the surroundings for the story. If you are like me, you will also realize how very little you saw as a tourist.

"The Fifth Gospel," for me, is tied right now with “The Christos Mosaic” for the year’s best high-brow thriller. Both go deeply into history, obscure texts, and the Bible, but both also have complex characters and, beyond the solution of historical/religious puzzles, resonant emotional interactions.

Caldwell’s previous novel, "The Rule of Four" moved a good deal faster than this one (“The Christos Mosaic” moves faster than both), but Caldwell has matured a bit more as a writer, and he focuses in this one on his characters and on biblical exegesis—in the form of the Diatessaron, Tatian’s second-century attempt to synthesize the biographies in the fours into a single, coherent narrative.

A number of readers have criticized the novel because Caldwell spends a lot of time on the contradictions between the Gospels, and the reader has to plow through quite a bit of textual analysis—“information dumps”—but I’m familiar with the Gospels and have read a good deal of commentary by scholars, so I didn’t have much difficulty with these parts. I was less taken with all the explanations of the intricacies of the Vatican’s inner workings, but this is a minor complaint.

What sets this novel apart from most other thrillers—meant, really, for long airplane rides, not a niche in your bookshelf—is the ending. Not the tying up of the mystery, which is a tad anticlimactic, but the final, emotional resolution, which is subtly uplifting.

"The Fifth Gospel" is a fictional novel with aspects of the Da Vinci Code, "The Cardinal" by Henry Morton Robinson, made into a film starring Thomas Tryon, and a P.D. James murder mystery. The novel resides in the sub-genre of a religious mystery dependent upon the modern religious juggling ancient relics and writings with current tradition and belief. (The genre was spear-headed by the likes of the Da Vinci Code, although it was by no means the first of its kind.)

At the novel's beginning, two brothers who reside together in the Vatican, the independent state inside Rome, are in fact on two sides of the fence of Roman Catholicism. Father Alex, the narrator and older brother, is a so-called Greek Catholic priest learned in Latin and Greek; unlike pure Roman Catholic priests, Greek Catholic priests are allowed to marry like their Greek Orthodox counterparts. Father Alex Andreou straddles both traditions knowing both the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, and in particular he's a scholar of ancient writings. He teaches boys about the Bible at the Vatican and assists with Ancient Greek writings of late Antiquity. He is less inclined about to offer literal interpretations of the Scriptures, knowing when certain scenes of the Gospel could be historical versus when they are meant to be symbolic. According to the author-narrator, Greek Orthodox priests, although they know Greek, are less-inclined to differentiate between the two interpretations.

Alex's brother is Father Simon, a devoted Roman Catholic Priest through-and-through whose been an embassador to other eastern Mediterranean countries; he is about 10 years Alex's junior. Simon has been for the last several years assisting a recently-appointed scholar-curator to the Vatican museums, Ugo Nogara. At the opening of the story, Nogara is about to curate a new exhibit in the Vatican museums, one which incorporate two ancient items: the Shroud of Turin and a previously unknown Gospel, called the Diatessaron.The Diatessaron, the so-called "Fifth Gospel", is an ancient codex written shortly after the Gospel of John in the early 2nd century, and it attempts to create one narrative which reconciles the four canonical gospels. Ugo claims he found it in the Vatican Library and it has been unknown to the librarians and curators. He asks for the help of Father Alex is to read and decipher the ancient Greek. Shortly before the exhibit, Ugo and Father Alex have a falling out, and Ugo refuses to speak with Father Alex. Then, he leaves a message on Alex's phone that he's discovered something about the Shroud and the codex, but then tragedy strikes! And Father Simon is subsequently accused of murder, which is handled by the Vatican courts, not the courts of Italy. While the Vatican does not imprison any convict, it can strip a priest of his priestly powers in a kind of living-death for the clergy. The Vatican then has the power to turn over the defrocked priest to Roman authorities. Can Father Alex find the truth before his brother may be convicted and sentenced to a living Hell?

Part murder mystery, part religious history, "The Fifth Gospel" also describes the culture of the Vatican. The Vatican is a self-contained country recognized as a legitimate state in the eyes of the world. The novel through Father Alex's present-tense narration brings us not just into St. Peter's Basilica but also through the different residences inside the Vatican, and in particular the apartments and palaces of the elite clergy. We also learn about the Swiss Guard and the Vatican police. Forces on high have the power to disrupt and even terminate investigations, even trials, which is typically not possible in most countries of Western Europe and the United States without severe political repercussions. But because of the Pope's unique office, he can wield enormous power over all things pertaining to the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. As events play out, the struggle is not just about the guilt or innocence of a Vatican priest, but the relations between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.

It's tempting to view Ian Caldwell's The Fifth Gospel as a Dan Brown knock-off. That's not really fair. They're in a similar genre--a mystery surrounding ancient texts in a religious setting--but The Fifth Gospel stands on its own.

When a curator of a new exhibit at the Vatican museum is murdered on the grounds of a papal retreat, his close friends, two priests who are brothers, get involved in the mystery. One is accused of the murder; the other, Father Alex, wants to exonerate his brother. Add in the subject of the exhibit, the Shroud of Turin and a Fifth Gospel, and motives, controversies, and mysteries will abound, even among the holy confines of Vatican City.

In my opinion the mystery part of The Fifth Gospel really dragged and did not keep me on the edge of my seat. As Father Alex uncovers clues and hits against walls of silence, my interest was only mildly piqued. The resolution of it all was a let down. What really interested me was Caldwell's description of life inside the walls of the Vatican.

Alex grew up in the Vatican and has a young son (as an Eastern Catholic, he can marry). Living in a place so steeped in history and religion, while doing mundane things like grocery shopping and raising a child, must be strange. Caldwell portrays it like a small town where everyone knows everyone else, which must not be too far from the truth, as the population is only a few hundred. Further, the conflict of the story revolves around the schism between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. As a Greek Eastern Catholic, Alex's allegiance is to Rome, but his tradition is a sort of bridge between the two groups. At issue is whether the events of the book can reunite the two traditions or further alienate them from one another.

I enjoyed The Fifth Gospel for the elements of religious, historical, cultural, and geographical education. That is enough reason to like a book. But it would have been even better if I had really been able to get into the story.

Although Ian Caldwell is non-Catholic, THE FIFTH GOSPEL is full of details about the Vatican and the priesthood. This is a literary mystery--who killed a religious scholar and why, is the Diatessaron really the fifth gospel and where is it, and is the Shroud of Turin really what is claimed and who does it belong to?

What fine character development in this novel! In particular, two priests, brothers, one Roman Catholic, the other Greek Catholic, are the main focus. Told from the point of view of one of them, Alex, this story is his investigation of these mysteries after Ugo, the religious scholar, is found dead, apparently murdered. Ugo had been studying the Diatessaron and found allusion there to the Shroud of Turin. Is this the reason he was murdered?

Catholic readers will appreciate all the research Caldwell did on the Vatican and the priests and bishops there. I'm not sure, however. if a non-Catholic would. I think THE FIFTH GOSPEL might have bored me if I were not a Catholic.

Or maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe the reader will appreciate this novel for its character-driven mystery when so many mysteries/thrillers are simply plot driven.

From a literary, historical and research point of view, the book should receive 10 stars. But the story of the shroud and efforts to overlook the authoritative dating are a dime a dozen. The real story are the characters - Alex, his son, his brother, Ugo and the Byzantium maze of Vatican machinations. The idea that the Gospels are not "historical" is an old one which leads to the odd circumstance where unreliable documents are usd to validate religious claims.

The story revolves around the Shroud of Turin, the split between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and the validity of the Gospels. It has long been recognized that the Gospels are not historical and until recently, John was seen as the last written (it is now Luke). But increasingly, scholars are recognizing archeological and Scriptural evidence that the core of John, the Passion, comes from a very early source. The Pool of Bethesda and its 5 porticos and the Pool of Siloam - once thought to be symbolic - were found under the ruins of the 70 AD revolt. No trial exists because Jesus had already been found guilty of sedition. Peter could not enter a pagan's home (Pilate) for purity reasons. These (and others) point to a date earlier than any other Gospel. (The supernatural elements were added much later.)

Leaving aside all that, the story is captivating in a way that few are. Love for a son, a brother, a wife and a church are explored in their many facets and it is this that propels the story. Simon, the brother, is cast as the sacrificial lamb for which the sins of the Vatican must be absolved. Ugo is the searcher for truth who forged ahead despite the terror of his findings. Then there is the rich panoply of Vatican insiders, Medieval laws and customs and all the secrets that had to be protected. A tour de force of writing - rich, evocative prose that seems almost poetic at times. My Grade - A

I loved the main character, and I found the insights (accurate or not) into Vatican politics and life fascinating. The general mysteries -- the whodunnit, whydunnit, and questions about the Shroud of Turin and the gospels -- were nicely done. Most of the major characters were well-developed or at least fun to watch. But one of the semi-major characters, in particular, was disappointingly poorly developed, so the work suffered.

I don't know how accurate most of the historical facts were, but I imagine the relationships between different religious groups were realistic. I loved learning about those relationships, and loved the somewhat intellectual components of the book generally. Those parts of the book required some thought but were also fascinating.

The very end -- after the final resolution of the mystery -- seemed disappointingly shallow and contrived. It felt like an add-on. Thus four stars.

But it's well worth the read!

I confess I had no expectations of this novel going in. Or, rather, low ones -- assuming, as I did, that it was in the same vein as Dan Brown's various Davinci-inspired books. As it turns out, The Fifth Gospel is leagues beyond those books in the quality of its writing, the depth of its character development, and the complexity of the story it tells. I have no idea how true to history the historical elements in this book are. I'll defer to expert readers on that score. I will say this, though: if it's all nonsense, it's very well-crafted, compelling, and convincing nonsense. I take everything I read in this book (about the history of the shroud of Turin and of the Church) with a grain of salt. I came to the book simply for entertainment; as such, I found it richly rewarding. If I happened to learn a true thing or two along the way (I suspect I did), so much the better. Great book!

The Fifth Gospel promises intrigue and mystery in the Vatican ala The DaVinci Code. Alas, that is not the case. I feel bad for the author as he acknowledges that this book took ten years to write. That might've been a clue. The subject material involving the Vatican, Shroud of Turin and the Diatessaron, a little known fifth gospel. While the author's penchant for factual accuracy is quite good, there's too much of it to make this a taut thriller. There are myriad passages bogged down with having to explain a lot of the terminology and historical facts. I was brought up catholic and I didn't know much of what was discussed. I guess i skipped those classes.
The story itself involves Alex, a priest and a dad, weird, living in Vatican City. His brother Simon calls, their friend Ugo is dead and then there's a break in at Alex's apartment. And so they set out to find the killer but Simon is arrested but there's a super secret trial, no one can spill anything they know adding to intrigue until you finally reach the end, meh. I took to skipping pages at a time as I skimmed and and realized they had little relevance to plot, as far as I could tell. This reads as more of a historical book, splashed with a fictional story that really never gets moving very fast.

This book intrigued me from the start and held my attention through most of it, but I really didn't feel the anxiety the characters felt. The overall plot was just a bit underwhelming for my taste. I honestly did not feel invested in what the characters had going on, which affected my overall opinion of it. With that said, I did enjoy the historical aspect of it. The part I enjoyed most, and wanted to read more about, was the history of the Shroud and the biblical references. If more depth was put into the religious study, I feel I would have liked it much more. The trial kept stealing me away from what I found most interesting. I did like the mysterious death, and I kept reading in order to find out what happened, though I did find the final few chapters a bit underwhelming. Overall, I think the author did a fantastic job with the researching and building an intriguing mystery, but I don't feel any of the characters really stood out enough to be memorable.

With the Shroud of Turin as centerpiece (Or is it?), the Fifth Gospel speeds through early church history and emerging theology, splashing through an autumnal Vatican City in the last days of John Paul II. If you believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote the gospels, you'll be happier with another murder/religious politics semi-thriller. If you understand the timing of when the accepted versions of the gospels were committed to writing, crafted and selected for the specific purposes of different factions of early Christendom, you'll enjoy how this caroms from scripture to relics to art and to intrigue. You may get a crick in your neck from all the plot twists. The device of brothers who are priests, one in the Roman rite and one in the Eastern rite, is meant to underscore the conflict and potential reconciliation of the two main branches of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but the author also stretched to have Simon as a Christ figure. It's asking a lot of a character to bear two major burdens of symbolism. I enjoyed the research, the pace, the sense of Vatican palace intrigue and the real world potential of the plot.

I just finished reading this excellent novel. I usually don't read reviews prior to reading a book but frequently check them out after the fact, which is what I just finished doing. I like to get a sense for how others experienced what I just read as well as to see why some might have disagreed with me.

I won't go into the plot developments, etc. as many of the reviews here have already done that. Instead I will take a few sentences to discuss why I liked the book and address some of the more negative reviews.

I should note that I am Catholic which is one of the reasons the description of the book appealed to me. Additionally, I have a great interest in the Gospels and have studied them to a great degree. Father Alex's discussions about the Gospels with Ugo were fascinating to me and intellectually stimulating.

Additionally, the author's portrait of the Vatican was interesting in that he neither made it totally glorious nor totally dark and seamy. Instead, he gave you a look at both aspects, as well as the political nature of the Church and the country called Vatican City. One could easily feel that they were walking with Alex as he went about his different routes.

The build up of relationships was also well done, be it the relationship between Alex and Simon, between them and Ugo, or between Alex and his son and wife. Even the more casual relationships were not just glossed over. Even the very minor characters, like some of the Swiss Guard are brought to life and you sense the whys and wherefores of what they are doing.

Finally, although I can enjoy a mystery where I am able to piece together the answers well before the end, I really prefer those that keep me guessing. And this was much more than a murder mystery. There were, so to speak, mysteries within mysteries, all of which took multiple, but always believable twists and turns.

A couple quick comments about some of the more negative reviews. Many talk about it being slow and plodding and with poor character build up or being too much into minutiae. I can't say those reviewers are wrong, because to them it was. I suspect, though I don't know for sure, that those readers were expecting something with more physical action and faster moving. Maybe they were expecting something more along the lines of the Da Vinci Code, which this book definitely is not.

In other words, if you prefer a book you really don't need to put too much thought into and which doesn't bog you down in data and facts, don't read this book. It isn't for you. That is not a criticism of you, nor am I trying to do a better than thou type of attitude. People read books for different reasons and it is never fun when you pick up a book expecting one thing only to have it be totally different, and in a bad way.

But, if you want a book that draws you in at a deeper level, a book where you want to go back and reread sections, then this book is for you.

Father Alex Andreou is a Greek Catholic priest, which means that he is a subject of the Roman Catholic pope, but otherwise follows many of the traditions of the Greek Orthodox Church. As a Greek Catholic priest, he was allowed to enter the priesthood as a married man.

The priesthood is Alex's family business and the Vatican is his world. His father was the seventh in a generational line of Greek Catholic priests. Alex lives in his childhood apartment in Vatican City, along with his five-year-old son, Peter. Alex's wife, Mona, suffered a breakdown from postpartum depression not long after Peter's birth and left her family.

Alex's adored older brother, Simon, is a charismatic Roman Catholic priest who is a Vatican diplomat. Like his father and Pope John Paul, Simon's passionate ambition is to heal the centuries-long schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. At the time this novel is set, the Pope is crippled with Parkinson's disease and nearing his death, but still absorbed with this goal of rejoining the branches.

Alex and Peter are in their apartment one rainy evening, eagerly awaiting a visit from Simon, who is late. Finally, Simon calls, evidently distraught, and asks for Alex to meet him at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer retreat, where Alex is shocked to find Simon with the corpse of Ugo Nogara, a museum curator.

Ugo is an old friend of Simon's whom Alex was tutoring in Gospel theology to help Ugo with an exhibit at the Vatican about the Shroud of Turin. Years earlier, the Shroud had been claimed by scientists to be carbon-dated as being from medieval times and could not have been the burial shroud of Jesus. Ugo promises his exhibit will shatter what the world thought it knew about the Shroud. As if Ugo's murder isn't enough of a shock, after their interview with the police, Alex and Simon return to Alex's apartment to find that someone has come into the apartment and rifled Alex's belongings, while Peter and his caretaker cowered in the bedroom closet.

With Simon reluctant to fill Alex in on what might have been behind these two crimes, Alex begins his own investigation, calling on the many old friends and acquaintances who work at the Vatican as Swiss Guards, drivers and clerics. But the real solution may be the subject of Nogara's exhibit and, for that, Alex's expertise in the history of the Gospels is critical.

You wouldn't think that a mystery that revolves around the intricacies of Gospel history and critical interpretation could make for a decent thriller plot, but it's surprisingly compelling stuff. Caldwell has that gift of taking a subject you might not have any interest in and making it fascinating. It doesn't hurt that he adds in lashings of intrigue, with different groups within the Vatican favoring or implacably opposing any reconciliation with the Greek Orthodox Church--a reconciliation that would have to overcome centuries of hatred and mistrust, due in large part to the violence and plundering visited by Catholic Crusaders on the Greek Orthodox Church in Constantinople.

If you're looking for an action-heavy thriller, this isn't it. The plot plays out deliberately and works more cerebrally than physically. This isn't just a thriller, though. Unlike so many thrillers, the focus is at least as much on the characters, and on history and ideas. And, without a bit of romance, this is a novel that is overwhelmingly about love. Love of family, of God, of friends. The kind of love that changes lives and leads to tremendous sacrifice.

The novel is a bit of a slow starter, but as I read on, it became completely engrossing. I think it's important to say you don't have to be a believer to find the story and its characters compelling. I've heard some people mention The DaVinci Code in connection with this book, but this is nothing like The DaVinci Code--and that's a good thing, in my opinion.

A note about the audiobook: The narrator is Jack Davenport. If you watched the NBC series Smash, he played the libidinous English director. He has a voice like Irish Coffee and, to be honest, he could read me an insurance contract and I'd keep listening.

Like his previous work, The Rule of Four, this book wanders back and forth between being truly fascinating and bloated with tedious detail. There were moments when I loved the writing and some of the metaphors - early on. They began to feel omnipresent and clunky as I ventured further into the book. I enjoyed the details about the differences between the Orthodox and the Roman Church, and was willing to go with some of the unlikely plot points because I was interested, overall, in the story.

Full disclosure: I originally chose this book because I knew it had the Shroud of Turin at its center. I have read just about every piece of evidence for the Shroud that has been published, and therefore I am likely far more critical than most would be about factual errors or lazy research. I winced when I read them, as well as some of the weird conclusions about the Gospels, but I continued. I cared about the protagonist and I wanted to follow his journey. I was listening to it on Audible as well as reading it, and I loved the narrator.

I won't spoil this for anyone, but the end of the book made me want to hurl my phone against the wall so it would stop playing. I could not believe that Caldwell dragged us along this shaggy priest story to come to THAT conclusion. It is similar to how I felt when I first watched M Night Shyamalan's film, The Village, and discovered that the monsters were really people wearing costumes. I am utterly gobsmacked that this was where the book was headed all along. I feel so cheated. I want those 12 hours of my life back.

Being a fan of The Rule of Four, I could hardly pass up a chance to read Mr. Caldwell’s long-awaited new novel. The fact that it takes place almost entirely in Vatican City near the end of the reign of John Paul II was just icing on the cake. Fortunately, it pretty much lived up to my expectations. This is an interesting and exciting novel.

Part of its appeal lies in the revelation of things about how the Roman Catholic Church works that many believers probably don’t even know, not in an obvious attempt to tear down the Church but to inform. Besides the extended tour of the Vatican grounds we get in the pages of this novel, even into the areas where the workers make the city-state run, there is the political workings of the various departments in the Vatican as well as a look at an ecclesiastical court.

And, of course, there is the relationship between the Latin Church and the Greek Orthodox. Some Catholics are probably aware of the split between the East and West that is usually dated to 1054. What fewer seem to be aware of is that there are Greek Catholics who are part of the Western Church. While loyal to the Vatican, their priests are allowed to marry and have children, and their rite is Greek.

It is a Greek priest, Alex Andreou, who narrates this novel. He lives in the Vatican, and he has a son who lives with him and an estranged wife. He also has a brother, Simon, who has become a priest of the Roman Church and is on the fast-track to the upper level of the hierarchy. This family unit and their struggles growing up in the shadow of St. Peter’s form the interesting background of the characters in this story, revealed through various flashbacks.

Of course, the plot of the novel is based around a crime. Father Simon stands accused of the murder of Ugo, a family friend and the curator of an exhibition at the Vatican about the Shroud of Turin. Using an ancient fifth gospel, Ugo appears to have traced the truth about the Shroud, which makes him dangerous. Through his race to prove his brother’s innocence, Father Alex learns much about what Ugo has discovered about the Shroud. Red herrings abound—some historical, some not—and the reveals at the end of the novel about Ugo’s death, if not about the Shroud, are surprising.

In the end, though there is no startling conclusion about the Shroud, it is a device that allows Mr. Caldwell to produce one of the best of the recent thrillers, filled with fascinating insights about the Vatican.

The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell is one of those books that I wanted to like more than I did. The story. The mystery. The attention to detail. Caldwell does a masterful job of telling his tale, only he does it at times at a snail's pace.

"...A long time ago, ' I say. 'our church used to have a fifth gospel. The Diatessaron. Its title is Greek for 'made of four', because that's how it was written. The author wove together the four gospels into one story. And because of that, the Diatessaron has one great weakness. Do you know what it is?'
I can feel Ugo beside me now. We are staring at the pages of the ancient manuscript.
'Its weakness,' I say, 'is that the four gospels don't always agree..."

On the night that Father Alex Andreou's home, in the Vatican, is broken into; the curator for a mysterious exhibit at the Vatican Museum is killed. When the Papal police are unable to get anywhere with the break in, Father Andreou realizes he must act to protect him home and his young son. Worse is the murdered curator, his friend Ugo, is suspected to have been killed by Father Andreou's own brother Simon.

A dying Pope, a lost gospel, a controversial Church relic and the murder of the museum curator all converge on Father Andreou. He is thrust upon a journey within the walls of the Vatican and the history of the Church to unravel the secrets of the lost gospel and the mysterious Shroud of Turin. Secrets that led to murder.

The Fifth Gospel is a labor of love. It is obvious that Caldwell is passionate about the subject matter and it shows in his writing. From the intricacies of Vatican politics to little known and forgotten times in the history of the church; Caldwell writes about them with detailed research and the sense of an author believing deeply in his subject matter. As flawed and regrettable as some of it is.

Father Andreou is an interesting and arresting character. An outsider in the Church he loves. A scholar in a system that requires so much faith. A priest allowed to marry and have a family. His failed marriage and private life a powerful contrast to his duty and position as a priest. Andreou is torn between fighting for his faith and fighting for his family as so much of what he once believed in is called into question.

The mystery behind the lost gospel and the connection it has to the Shroud of Turin is the weakest spot in this story. The reader does not find out until the end what the true mystery is. How it would affect the church and why it was worth killing for.

Calwell does not resort to the ploy of making the church the great evil in this book. While he does bring about what has been wrong in the acts of the church, it is not some diabolical secret society hell bent on destroying everyone's lives to further its own goals. A ploy that so many writer's are using today and as a reader and reviewer, has become cheap and insulting.

The Lost Gospel is a very good book with the flaw of moving too slowly at times in its telling. Caldwell fills the book with such detail and thought, that is seems to be a drawn out special on the History Channel. If you are interested in church history and ideology, then you will absolutely love it. If not, it can become tedious in spots.

But in that he has come up with a remedy of creating characters who are limited in how they can act and what they can do by their setting, yet still hold you breathless and intrigued.

Overall a good read.

Set in 2004, just prior to the death of Pope John Paul II, the novel centers on the murder of the Vatican museum's curator just prior to the opening of an exhibit. One of two brothers, who are both priests living at the Vatican (the protagonist Greek Catholic, the other a Roman Catholic), rushes to determine who killed his friend, the priest/curator, and why. The mystery centers on a "Fifth Gospel," which is actually a Gospel "harmony" called the "Diatessaron" written by Tatian in the early 2nd century in an attempt to harmonize the accounts of the life of Jesus in the Four Gospels, by combining and contrasting the four. In terms of this novel, the first 3 differ in one significant and controversial respect from the Gospel of John.

This heavily-researched, intelligent thriller covers a lot of ground, including the Diatessaron, the Great East-West Schism (the split in 1054 of the Christian church between East and West) resulting in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches which split from the Roman Catholics, and papal politics. This heavily researched, racing and tense novel is reminiscent of Dan Brown's DaVinci, with a better literary quality, not nearly as controversial a key to solving the crime, though it does have a tendency to get a bit sluggish.

The author says it took him 10 years to finish this novel; it follows "The Rule of Four," a book he co-authored with Dustin Thomason that spent 49 weeks on the "New York Times" bestseller list. And now that I've read it, I understand why it took so long. The time it must have taken to ferret out the details that make it so intriguing - from hidden nooks and crannies within Vatican City to nuances in passages from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - boggle my mind (and this from someone who enjoys doing research). But I'll warn others up front: I found it impossible to speed-read my way through the book. The devil's in the details, so to speak, and those details are well worth the effort even though they get a bit heavy at times. Glossing over anything, though, would mean missing way too much.

Because of the subject matter, comparisons with Dan Brown's books "The DaVinci Code" and "Angels and Demons" are inevitable; I've read and enjoyed both, but in many respects, I found this one more to my liking. For openers, the story is woven more around historical facts, insights into Papal law, Biblical interpretation and differences among Roman and Greek Catholicism than clandestine groups out to destroy the church and human feats that test the boundaries of believability.

There's another big difference: This one is a story about family ties - both with blood relatives and the family that is the Church. At the center are two brothers, Father Alex Andreou and Father Simon Andreou. Their love for each other is strong, as is their love for their churches: Father Simon is a Roman Catholic and Father Alex is a Greek Catholic. Among the differences? Father Alex is allowed to be married, even though he works at the Vatican. He lives here with his young son, Peter - his wife, Mona, abandoned her husband and child a few years earlier.

Early on, a man named Ugo Nogaro, curator of an upcoming exhibit involving the currently debunked Shroud of Turin, is found dead. In addition to his work with the Shroud, Nogaro has been doing extensive research on the four gospels as well as the Diatessaron, a fifth gospel that apparently was written to bring together and clarify differences in those first four books. Father Simon has been helping with the exhibit, and Father Alex, also a teacher and expert on scriptures, has been helping Nogaro with understanding what is written in the gospels.

Because Father Simon was standing near Nogaro's dead body, he is arrested by the Vatican police and stashed away in a secret place. Worse, he refuses to say a word in his own defense. But his brother, Father Alex (from whose perspective the story is told), steadfastly believes in his innocence and sets out to prove it - a journey that delves into the reasons Nogaro was murdered and secrets of both the Shroud and Diatessaron that church leaders may not want revealed.

For those who enjoy learning about the history and workings of the Catholic Church, complex interactions among family members and a good murder mystery, I highly recommend this book (conversely, those who believe every word of the Bible is literal fact probably won't like it at all). And as I said at the outset, it's far from light reading ("tedious" is a word that appears in a couple of the less-than-favorable reviews), but as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the best books I've read in quite some time.

I have neither written many reviews nor read many. At times it seems futile. I've always found it simpler to read the summary to see if I'm interested and see how many people enjoyed the novel by checking out the star breakdown.

But Caldwell is no airport novelist. His novels especially this one are cerebral, packed with adjectives and emotion. The religious conspiracy is actually the secondary topic. This is a novel primarily about complex family relations. A father and son, an uncle and nephew, an abandoned husbands attempts to cope with the reemergence of his wife and his sons glee, and more than anything its about two brothers.

There is no basis for comparison. This is a novel I had to work through along with the fantastic narration because there was so much more to it than I expected. Why?? This like Caldwell's other work was so such more.

In 2004, two young authors and former college buddies penned a novel that spent nearly 50 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. THE RULE OF FOUR received mixed reviews, and its popularity spread primarily through word of mouth. The inevitable comparisons to Dan Brown's legendary THE DA VINCI CODE were made, which was a high standard to live up to. Then, inexplicably, Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason faded from sight.

It is obvious to me that during this 11-year hiatus, Caldwell spent time doing much research and honing his skills as a writer. The end result is the brilliant THE FIFTH GOSPEL, a controversial novel that is certain to cause much discussion and, hopefully, a place at the top of the New York Times bestseller list where it rightly belongs.

Filled with enough historical and theological intrigue to please the biggest fans of this genre and enough action to please nearly everyone else, THE FIFTH GOSPEL is destined to be one of 2015's finest novels. At the heart of this pulse-pounding effort is a lost gospel that is sought by many --- specifically our two protagonists, each of whom are Vatican priests.

Just a few short months ago, the leaders of the Roman Catholic Orthodox churches met to discuss a mutual enemy: ISIS. THE FIFTH GOSPEL finds an ancient rift that split the two largest Christian sects and traces it all the way back to the birth, life and death of Jesus Christ. The novel breaks down the four gospels of the Bible in a very intelligent way, outlining the many discrepancies between the history recounted by the four apostles who penned them. What the book proposes is an alleged fifth gospel --- one that unites all four of those found in the Bible and gives clear answers on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The two brothers, Simon and Alex Andreou, are well-developed characters who are easy to cheer for. You also will find yourself holding your breath and wincing as they escape one pitfall after another in search of one of the most controversial relics in the history of the world --- the Shroud of Turin.

With the existence of the actual Shroud of Turin in question, a radical religious scholar is murdered just when he is about to display the purported item. It is then up to the Andreou brothers not only to solve the murder of their friend, but also to seek out the truth behind the existence of this fifth gospel and preserve it at all costs.

A fun and eye-opening read, THE FIFTH GOSPEL deserves to be discussed in the same breath as Dan Brown's work and also calls to mind Umberto Eco's THE NAME OF THE ROSE. There is also reference to recent Roman Catholic history as we learn about Pope John Paul II's dying wish for the Catholic Church. Sit down, dig in, and prepare for many hours of uninterrupted reading as you most assuredly will get lost inside this novel.

Reviewed by Ray Palen.

Caldwell's "The Fifth Gospel" is a murder mystery set within the Vatican. Not the Vatican tourists see, but the the vast labyrinth kept from public view. Likewise, Caldwell's characters are all fashioned after those who actually administer the Vatican. I'm astonished at the amount of research Caldwell has done.

But, this novel isn't a travelog nor is it a Vatican expose. It's a carefully constructed murder mystery that had me guessing until the end.

At the core of this mystery is the Shroud of Turin, and a researcher (Ugo Nogara) who is mounting a public exhibit of the Shroud in the Vatican. An exhibit that promises to change everything the public believe about the Shroud. When the researcher is found dead just days before the exhibit opens, the hunt is on for his killer.

And what a hunt it is. Ugo's close friend Simon, a priest, is found standing over Ugo's body and is arrested by the Vatican police. But Simon's brother Alex, also a priest, Believes Simon is innocent. So Father Alex begins an investigation to find who the actual murderer is, an investigation that carries him through monsignors, bishops, and cardinals, all the way to those closest to the Pope. And, eventually, to the Pope himself. Needless to say church politics are in play, and Father Alex's investigation runs into one road block after another.

And in seeking the murderer, Father Alex also delves into the likely reasons why Ugo was murdered. An exploration that quickly focuses on Ugo's research discoveries about the hidden history of the Shroud.

This is a story with complex characters, and a plot that twists and turns. Details about Vatican life, canon law, and church history make the story feel real.

This is also a story about relationships. Brother to brother. Friend to friend. Father to son. The strength of relationships. Commitment. Devotion.

I highly recommend this book for mystery readers, especially fans of contemporary mysteries with strong historical elements.

Ian Caldwell The Fifth Gospel
This is Caldwell's second book and is a fast paced addictive read: part murder mystery, part family saga, part legal thriller and part papal politics. It is a thought provoking, intellectual thriller, again with extraordinary research and moving human drama. Fascinating history of Eastern Orthodox and catholic religions, the shroud of Turin and the gospels as historical teachings. Excellent balance of smart characters, intricate twists, sacrifice and forgiveness.
It needed a map, the Vatican is an intricate mystery on so many levels.
A second reading is possible to rethink some of the detailed information. Recommend listening to the audio book narrated by British actor Jack Davenport.

Caldwell is superb with crisp writing and evocative scenes. The novel is well researched, but readers will find it difficult to separate fact from fiction: the scenes and church behaviors likely true to life, but some plot elements clearly mysterious. Intentional I choose to believe.

He is not Dan Brown. Thankfully. Readers of a Vinci Code will not find the fantasy web Brown weaves, but rather an intelligent and believable tale of a Church and the Vatican few are privy to.

A little too much "telling" for me as a writer. I'd rather draw my own conclusions from plot elements and character behavior. Father Alex and his brother Simon are not fully developed and the angst they experience falls a little short in the telling. The family tension inserted is not convincing for me.

To Caldwell's credit, the last 50 pages beginning with a Church deposition are riveting and the pace, once regular, accelerates.

Read it for the brilliance of the writing and to experience a perspective of the Catholic Church from the inside. Read the acknowledgments for the backstory of a writer immersed in his work.

This book started off great. Good suspense, fascinating insights into life in Vatican City (its own nation). And the author has a way with words and some creative turns of phrases that make for pleasant reading. But the book is way overlong and drags in the middle. Any sense of this book being a "thriller" is long gone by the halfway point. But worst of all is the failure of this book to provide a coherent plot that is in the least bit plausible.

Spoiler alert: if you plan on reading this book anyway, you might want to stop here. But for those looking for some advice as to whether they should invest the many hours it will take to get through it, take note. While the author seems to extol the brilliant biblical scholarship of his main character, that so-called brilliance rests in a conclusion that the Gospel of John is unreliable and fictional in part because it includes facts about the crucifixion of Jesus that are not mentioned in the Synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. And based upon this silly conclusion, the book declares the Shroud of Turin a forgery because it shows wounds of Jesus that only John mentions and, therefore, must not have actually been inflicted. Similar to the nonsense in The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, supposedly a 6th century "Fifth Gospel" showed that the Church tried to cover up an obscure monk's "discovery" that John's Gospel was not accurate as given to us in the New Testament.

It is always amazing to me that so many people, especially so-called biblical scholars, think they have discovered errors and deceptions in the New Testament from their vantage point of twenty centuries later and their comfortable academic offices. The authorities who determined which gospels were true and what should be in them had their lives on the line. Now there's a real incentive to determine the truth since martyrdom awaited those who proclaimed the truth of Jesus Christ. Not to mention their vantage point of 18-19 centuries closer to the actual events.

If you like the Jesus Seminar and all that revisionist nonsense; if you think maybe Jesus did marry Mary Magdalene and become a royal family in France; if you think the apostles and contemporaneous disciples of Jesus invented his resurrection and miracles in order to get themselves tortured and killed--then this book is for you. Add it to the tall pile of balderdash that tries but always fails to obscure the stunning story of the Son of God and his redemptive work for mankind.

As a major exhibit about the Shroud of Turin is about to open at the Vatican Museum, curator Ugo Nogara is found dead. His friend Father Simon, who was at the crime scene, remains silent and is accused of murder. Simon’s brother, Father Alex, who has been helping Ugo analyze the Diatesseron to find clues about the shroud, finds his own life in danger. Is someone trying to sabotage the exhibit, or is the truth even stranger? There are three suspense stories in this novel: the mystery of the Shroud of Turin; the analysis of the Diatesseron (aka the Fifth Gospel); and the tensions between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox religions. The historical facts are fascinating, but Caldwell brings in a few too many side stories, such as Father Alex’s wife, and the unresolved character of Cardinal Boia. The novel is not on a par with Da Vinci Code, but then much of Dan Brown’s own work is not either.

If you are traveling to Italy and plan to visit the Vatican, this novel is a must read. It's full of information on the inhabitants and workings of this city/state. However, Ian Caldwell says it took ten years to write this book and at times it feels drawn out. It's as if he's trying to make sure he gets all the details that he's researched down on paper so calling this novel a "thriller" is a bit of a stretch. The authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is the real mystery and solving the murder is secondary. Also, there is a lack of small details that masters such as Alan Furst and Ken Follet use to make their characters really come to life.

The world waited ten years for a follow-up to the amazing novel The Rule of Four, and last year we finally got it. One of the co-authors of The Rule of Four, Ian Caldwell, published The Fifth Gospel, a dense and literary murder mystery set entirely in the Vatican.

It’s a worthy second work, though not quite as gripping and fast-paced as his previous book. In fact, it’s quite slow at times–there’s not much action here. It’s more Agatha Christie than Dan Brown.

But it wasn’t the plot that kept me going. It was the narrator. The Rule of Four was about college students, written by two guys in that phase of life themselves. Ten years later, Caldwell is a husband and the father of three small children, a young professional settling into the life he’s established. Again, this is all reflected in the narrator.

Caldwell loves the family that are his characters and he wants us to, also. And we do.

Even better, the narrator is a religious scholar and a priest. I don’t know if Caldwell is religious or not, but his book is. It doesn’t aim to be faith promoting, but it takes religion seriously. In the eyes of the narrator and the world around him, faith is a valuable, respectable thing that has real heft in our minds and spirits. I was immediately comfortable reading this book in a way that I haven’t been with a novel in a long time.

The worldview of the novel is mature and realistic in a way that most of our society has forgotten is even possible.

Caldwell’s writing is skilled, and yes, there’s plenty of intriguing trivia here to keep the da Vinci Code crowd interested. Like The Rule of Four, The Fifth Gospel largely revolves around reverence for a historical and rare ancient text, another huge plus in its favor.

As soon as I finished it, I realized that I liked it enough that I’ll read whatever Caldwell writes next, whatever it is and whenever it comes out. Hopefully it won’t take another ten years. What better recommendation can a reviewer give?

Spoilers within: This book was okay, but it could have been great. It had an interesting premise, but everything about the mystery of the Shroud of Turin was so drawn out and belabored. I also couldn't understand why Ugo and Fr. Alex were the only ones to figure out the mystery ... we're asked to accept that no one has ever done a critical reading/comparison of the Diatessaron and the four gospels as it might relate to the Shroud. I did enjoy the descriptions of the Vatican - it's interesting how self-contained it is. My biggest problem with the book was the character of Fr. Alex. I found it so irritating the way he basically immediately accepted his wife back with no anger or resentment over her five-year absence. And then he confessed to the murder (that he believed Simon committed) to clear his brother's name, even though it means he could be removed from the priesthood and the Vatican. He spends the whole book telling us how much he cares about his son, but then makes this snap decision that could upend Peter's whole life as he knows it. It was like he completely forgot about him in favor of the mighty Simon. And speaking of Simon, why won't he defend himself? I get that he feels responsible for Ugo's death, but couldn't he do more good in the world if he remains a priest rather than throwing it all away? And last thing: I don't know anything about Canon law or how things work at the Vatican, but I have a hard time believing that, unless I missed something, there were no consequences for Simon or Alex, given that Simon's behavior triggered a completely invalid trial, wasting time and resources, and Alex lied to the police and the Holy Father, not to mention that he tampered with evidence throughout the book.Is this behavior really acceptable?

There was a pretty interesting story buried in all of the church doctrine.
I liked the characters, they were well drawn and they lived. I just did
not like the world where they lived . Two brothers, who were ordained priest,
in different sects of the church wish to unite their churches. There is a murder
and an intense trial of one of the brothers. There is church politics and intrigue.
The reader sees the good and the bad of organized religion. There was way too
much church data, church ceremony and church history. I searched for the story.
It was a good story but sometimes it completely disappeared. This setting is not the
familiar church setting that I know. The Vatican is a country-----but it is a foreign country

This enjoyable read is primarily a paean to family values: brother worships brother; father and son worship each other; husband worships wife who left him; uncle worships nephew; etc. While all of this was a bit too treacly for me, I enjoyed the tours across Vatican City and information about assorted relics at St. Peter's, especially the supposed location of the "holy lance" that pierced Jesus' side, which according to this novel and Catholic exegesis is a symbol and not a factual object. While there is a lot of valuable research in this book, the pivotal revelation concerning the Shroud of Turin seems a bit contrived and based on subjective opinion, not conclusive evidence as portrayed here. If one is looking for "contradictions," one needs not go further than the visual evidence that the Shroud portrays a man crucified through the wrists rather than the hands, and it was the hands (Luke and John--an agreement!) that Jesus called attention to. Thus, the "tortured" way by which Caldwell "clinches" his thesis seems needlessly belabored. Also, since the Eastern Orthodox, unlike Roman Catholics, take the gospels at face value, it seems doubtful, within the scope of this novel, that they would have reacted adversely at the conclusions of Dr. Nogara. Such preposterous notions are how, in essence, they regard all Roman Catholic dogmas. I will grant that The Fifth Gospel is very well written and paced, but for Vatican thrillers, give me The Da Vinci Code and best still, Angels and Demons, anytime. There may be a backlash against Dan Brown for his popularity but, like Agatha Christie and all the contempt heaped upon her style of writing, he knows the value of entertainment and delivers the goods every time.

This story is a thrilling and emotional ride through biblical scholarship, Vatican hierarchy, the tradition of Christian relics, and the history of Christianity told from the perspective of an Eastern Catholic priest born and raised in the Western, Latin Vatican.

Alex Andreou is a theology instructor raising his five-year-old son in the Vatican by himself when Ugo Nogara, the curator of a major new Vatican exhibit on the Shroud of Turin is found dead. Nogara had devoted himself to uncovering the “true” history of the Shroud through forgotten historical documents, especially the Diatessaron, a fifth gospel from the second century that combined the four canonical gospels into a single narrative.

When Alex’s older brother Simon is accused of killing Nogara but refuses to defend himself, Alex decides it is his duty to prove his brother’s innocence and find out what, if any secrets Nogara had kept that would someone want to kill him.

Complicating the plot further is that while Alex chose to remain an Eastern Catholic priest as their father had been, Simon opted to become a Roman Catholic priest who quickly rose within the diplomatic ranks of the Vatican, and neither Simon nor Alex can forget their father’s broken dream of reuniting the Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic traditions despite a schism dating back almost a thousand years.

The author, Ian Caldwell says this book took nine years to research and write. That is easy to believe considering how the plot twists and turns while weaving in comparisons of gospel translations, the conflict between the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, and arcane Vatican jurisprudence without slowing the pace for a moment. I couldn’t put this book down as Alex maneuvered his way around walls of secrecy and silence to prove his brother’s innocence.

I felt Alex’s conflict to protect his young son and his older brother while facing the weight of his immediate family history and the knowledge that his brother has been keeping secrets too. He must again face the sudden deaths of his parents and his brother’s apparent need to sacrifice himself for others at any cost, not to mention Alex's wife, Mona's abandoning him and their son years before. Caldwell draws such vivid characters and recreates the odd bubble of Vatican life so vividly. I was sorry to finish the book but also deeply satisfied by a tale well told.

4.5 Stars....Yes, it is inevitable that comparisons to Brown's The DaVinci Code are going to appear all over the place, if only because that is apparently the one novel that most people have read. Okay, I get the comparison and might even use it myself. In fact if I were trying to describe Caldwell's novel to a person who didn't read a lot of novels for pleasure, I might tempt them by describing the books as "how the DaVinci Code *should* have been written."

The Fifth Gospel does indeed investigate mysteries within the Church, but Caldwell does so without destroying the dignity of the Church. The mystery/conspiracy focuses on the Shroud of Turin and there is so much history and interwoven thriller -- it just makes Dan Brown's books (for those of you who disdained them as much as I did) look childish. You really must give Caldwell a try. You won't be disappointed!