© Perseus, 2014
Sixteenth-century painter Caravaggio, a favourite of Popes and wealthy bankers, made a dangerous discovery threatening the very existence of the Catholic Church at a time when the resurgent Ottoman Empire was planning a second wave of conquest. The secret endured, as did the evidence, encoded in "The Betrayal of Christ". Yet his masterpiece went missing for 200 years before being rediscovered in 1999 in the unlikely setting of the Jesuit house in Dublin.
A decade later, in the run-up to a new Papal election, the world finds itself again on the brink of a clash between Christianity and Islam, and dark powers in the Vatican are conspiring to ensure a hardliner will become the new Pope. When the German Cardinal Horst Rüttgers dies in mysterious circumstances, his friend Declan O'Malley, the first Irish-born Superior General of the Society of Jesus, tries to uncover the truth, bringing him into conflict with the sinister and virulently anti-Muslim Cardinal Bosani – Camerlengo, or High Chamberlain, of the Holy Roman Church. As the two prelates grapple, O'Malley's nephew Liam Dempsey finds a bizarre link between Bosani and Caravaggio's painting which hints at a centuries-old conspiracy of evil. Can O'Malley and Dempsey, aided by the cool and resourceful Maya Studer, daughter of the Commandant of the Swiss Guard, prevent Bosani from re-igniting a calamitous war between Europe and the Muslim World?
The Lilliput Press 2012
Translated into: Bulgarian
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