Joe Lassiter is an ex-FBI investigator bent on revenge. His sister and young nephew have been murdered and the killer hospitalised. Despite warnings from the police Lassiter will stop at nothing to discover why. His search leads him to uncover an attempt by the Vatican to destroy all traces of a discovery that has sent them into such an alarm, that they have charged a right-wing fundamentalist hit-squad to rid the world of all evidence of it. The discovery originates from a confession in a remote village in Italy. A confession that sends the local priest into a panic and the Vatican into an uproar. The confession belongs to the late Dr Franco Baresi, and concerns the work at his fertility clinic - a fertility clinic that Lassiter's sister attended and, as he horrifyingly discovers, all the other victims in a recent series of murders that have swept the world. Women who were infertile until they attended the clinic. Lassiter must discover the remaining mothers before the hit men, and meanwhile his sister's killer is on the loose...

Reviews

YA‘The action in this suspenseful novel shifts from a picturesque hill town in Italy, to the streets of Rome, to a suburb of Washington, DC, and finally to its climax on a remote island in Maine. Joe Lassiter takes a leave of absence from his high-tech investigation agency to search for the murderer of his only sister and her son. He soon finds himself analyzing a string of other unsolved murders of mothers and their young sons, all of whom stayed at a fertility clinic in Italy. A physician renowned for his success at artificial insemination, a rural priest with a terrible secret revealed in confession, and the charismatic leader of a conservative Catholic organization all provide clues that lead Joe to the one person who can help him solve the mystery. This fast-paced thriller will draw YAs into some interesting questions concerning the use of DNA material and the ethics of genetic engineering, and will provide them with fascinating insights into the uses of modern investigative techniques.‘Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA

After hearing the confession of a renowned scientist who is now dying, the pastor of a remote parish in the Umbrian region of Italy rushes to Rome to alert the Vatican powers of an unspeakable sin. Within months, Joe Lassiter, a D.C.-area detective, learns of the brutal deaths of his sister, Kathy, and her toddler son, Brandon, in a mysterious fire in their home in suburban Burke, Va., in which an unknown Italian arsonist was also horribly burned. While Joe and the D.C. police keep watch on the burn victim, Brandon's body is dug from its grave and set afire again. After this horror, Joe discovers that Kathy and Brandon were only two of 34 victims worldwide, all mothers and toddler boys, killed in their beds and then burned beyond recognition. They were all connected through an Umbrian fertility clinic run by a scientist and theologian who, not unexpectedly, is himself now dead, his clinic a pile of ashes. At the center of this international carnage looms Umbra Domini, Shadow of the Lord, an ultra-secret Roman Catholic fraternity. At great risk, Joe sets out to save the one woman and child who have so far escaped Umbra's reach and in doing so discovers the staggering truth about these slaughtered innocents. Case, an investigative reporter, writes with intelligence and flair. He has built a first-rate thriller with an astonishingly timely revelation that's well worth staying up late for. (Apr.)

A doctor's confession to an Italian priest is so disturbing that the priest refuses to absolve him, then closes his church and waits four days for an audience with a cardinal in the Vatican. A few months later, a woman and her young son are gruesomely murdered and their house set on fire. The brother and main character, Joe Lassiter, is determined to find out why. He's pleased that the man who did the killings is in custody in the hospital, badly burned. Then the impossible happens: the killer escapes. So begins a compelling and suspenseful first novel about murder and religious fanaticism. The story moves along at a tremendous pace but is so packed with intriguing tidbits about the information age that it's at once a little unsettling and hard to put down. Great reading right to the very end; for most popular collections.‘Shirley Gibson Coleman, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., Mich.