The Death of a Pope

The Death of a Pope
by Piers Paul Read

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Book Summary Information

Author: Piers Paul Read
Brand: Ignatius Press
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-05-15
ISBN: 1586172956
Number of pages: 215
Publisher: Ignatius Press

Book Reviews of The Death of a Pope

Book Review: A lean, believable thriller
Summary: 4 Stars

The devil always gets the best lines. That was true in Genesis, true in Milton, and it's true in The Death of a Pope. It's not that the devil's arguments are better; they're not more reasoned, but they appear more reasonable. Which is to say, the devil is a populist--like a skilled politician he says what people want to hear and makes them believe that what he has to offer them is what they really want.
Piers Paul Read--author of the 1970s best-seller Alive--has put together what one endorsement calls a "faith-driven theological thriller." Our culture needs more books like these. Which is not to say that our culture needs more faith-driven theological thrillers, but that our culture needs more quality novels by authors whose faith informs their work. A Christian world view has historically had more success in some media than in others, but no medium has been as thoroughly Christian as the written word. Western literature was once shot through with the Christian world view, "charged with the grandeur of God" (to steal from Hopkins). Not that the literature of the West had always been explicitly Christian, but Christian grammar usually expressed the ideas and Christian parchment usually held the words in place.
Christian fiction has withstood the onslaught of secularism better than most other media. There is plenty of Christian fiction available, even in secular bookstores, and some of it has been quite successful. However, to survive as a genre, the majority of Christian fiction has had to become overtly Christian. This has had two negative consequences. First, it appeals to a much narrower audience; second, literary quality is sacrificed in favor of greater appeal to this narrow market share. Except for the Left Behind series, which played upon the general public's millennium fears, the basic audience for Christian fiction is Christian women who want an emotional need met in a way more morally acceptable than can be provided by Harlequin. (What this says about their Christian husbands is a topic for another essay.) To profit from such a limited audience, publishers make extensive use of series. Series are self-advertising, and as long as women's emotional needs are met, the audience doesn't seem to mind that each book in the series contains essentially the same plot. Besides, television has created the necessity for novels that engage the emotions but not the brain. The opposite of literature that is overtly Christian, however, is not literature that is covertly Christian, but rather literature that is catholic, which is to say, universal. It is literature that does not fit into the narrow genre called "Christian fiction" but that speaks to everyone, yet does so from a Christian world view. We are in desperate need, not of more LaHayes and Jenkinses and Beverly Lewises, but of more Chaucers and Evelyn Waughs and Flannery O'Conners.
I chose The Death of a Pope hoping Read would meet this need. I wanted to enjoy the book. No, more--I wanted to revel in it. I came away from the experience partially convinced, though not completely. It is a bit more than simply a thriller, though it does stumble both at being a thriller and at being "a bit more." I recommend it for those who like thrillers as well as for those looking for literature that's not overtly Christian. I'll try to explain here both where I see the book succeed and where I see it fall short.
G.K. Chesterton says of art, that it is a tale just sufficiently unusual to be worth telling, yet immediately intelligible when told. The Death of a Pope is a thriller whose plot (which doesn't become clear until over halfway through the novel) fits this definition as well as any. The central character is Juan Uriarte, a former Jesuit priest deeply critical of western apathy for the plight of repressed peoples in third-world nations and deeply influenced by the theology of liberation. Uriarte's convictions caused him to leave the priesthood in the 1980s to join the Salvadoran freedom fighters and eventually landed him in Africa working for a (fictional) Catholic relief agency. If Uriarte is critical of the West in general, he is deeply critical of the Catholic Church in particular. In the Church's continued refusal to ordain married men to the priesthood, to ordain any women to the priesthood and to fight AIDS through condom distribution, Uriarte sees that the hoped-for reforms of Vatican II have been hijacked by geriatric males out of touch with the needs of the world and the needs of the Church. Knowing that the aging John Paul II will pass sooner rather than later, Uriarte hatches a plot to release Sarin gas during the conclave to choose the Pope's successor, killing all of the Cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel. With the old guard out of the way and no one left to elect the new pontiff, Uriarte believes that a council will be convened consisting mostly of progressive members who will lead the Church into a new era and make it relevant to the modern world. Aiding him in this venture (unwittingly at first, but then with more conviction) is Kate Ramsey, a British journalist covering Uriarte's work with the relief agency. Uriarte's character is balanced by Kate's uncle, Father Luke Scott, an aging priest who has remained faithful to Church teachings, even when many of his brother priests have not. The cast of main characters is rounded out by David Kotovsky, an MI5 agent hot on Uriarte's trail.
Because the plot of Read's novel is essentially an ecclesial one, many of the characters and much of the dialogue are of necessity Catholic in nature. Chesterton said that all of Western art has been directly or indirectly inspired by Catholic Faith, even when it is merely a reaction against it. The same can be said of the motivations of the characters in this book. The bulk of the narrative is honest and balanced in its approach to the nature of the Catholic Faith, and for most of the novel the Catholics--regardless of their opinion of the Church's direction--are presented as sincere Christians who want what they believe is God's will for the Church. According to polls the West, particularly the United States, is still nominally Christian, but there is decreasing consensus as to what "Christian" means. A lot of Catholics--a lot of Christians in general--live in the spaces occupied by Uriarte and Kate. A lot more live in the space that separates Uriarte from Father Luke. One cannot escape questions regarding the ultimate meaning of things, and good literature doesn't ignore these questions but provides room for them.
Which is not to say that this is a work of orthodox apologetics disguised as a novel. In fact, only a couple of the characters (and none of the lay characters) are presented as traditional Catholics, and they are relatively weak. The strongest, most vibrant, most convincing character is Uriarte. As I said at the outset, the devil always gets the best lines. Uriarte's talk of sexual morality (a main component of his liberation theology is sexual liberation; sex is not shied away from in the book, but neither is it graphically portrayed), of the shared commonalities of all religions, and his indictment of Pope Pius XII has great appeal to today's culture. Uriarte says: "That is the tragedy of the Catholic Church. It could be...the most powerful, the most effective agency for bringing justice to the world, but always the charism of thousands is thwarted by the diktat of one or two old men." I have heard many people who identify themselves as Catholics express these same sentiments. They occupy the same space as Kate, who, though engaged early on with her uncle in meaningful dialogue about faith, ultimately succumbs to Uriarte's passion and charisma; qualities that Father Luke does not possess. The appeal that Uriarte's Catholicism has for many people is symbolized by Kate's falling in love with him and turning her back on her uncle. The warning is that in doing so Kate jeopardizes both her life and her soul.
The most positive, most faithful Catholic character in the book is also, interestingly, the weakest main character. Not quite the worst developed, but the least effective at what he's trying to accomplish. Father Luke means well, but he's too old and too tired to compete with Uriarte. Luke proves a poor counterweight to Uriarte's arguments. If the long passages assigned to him in his discussions with Kate are meant to catechize the reader, they aren't very convincing. They don't convince Kate; they even seem to me to be the weaker of the arguments that could have been chosen. I spent most of the novel wanting him to make the better arguments that are out there, and then I realized that nothing he could have said would have changed Kate's response. People don't always let things like facts and truth win out over sentiment and emotional appeal. Harvard scientists have backed the Church's stance on condom distribution, yet health and aid agencies--even Catholic ones--continue to accuse the Church of condemning Africans to death.
Part of Father Luke's weakness is that, as a literary main character, he is not very dynamic. By the end of the novel he has undergone no change because he has no change to undergo. He's got no flaw beyond his inability to provide a convincing defense of Church teaching; no weakness common to the rest of us with which he struggles and overcomes or succumbs to in the end. Father Luke's only success comes when he stops talking to Kate about faith and actually does something which rescues her from her poor choices. Only in this one moment is he a man of action--the closest he comes to heroic--yet that doesn't last. The Apostle Paul says that it is in our weakness that Christ is strong, and that could be what Read is driving at in developing Father Luke's character. If so, then the last thing that happens to Father Luke sends a mixed message, for it seems to occur for no apparent reason other than literary Natural Selection: his character simply wasn't strong enough to survive.
Though the first half of the book is almost entirely devoted to character development, not enough is done with David. A more experienced crafter of thrillers, such as John le Carré, would have developed him more and given him his own interconnected subplot, especially since David wants so much to be a romantic interest for Kate. Read needs to give his audience a reason to want this for him. The plot needs David. There's a dragon to be fought and a damsel to be won, but there's no St. George to do the fighting or the winning. The plot is crying for David to be the St. George to Uriarte's dragon, yet he's a cardboard character--flat and bland. He only exists to pop up a few times and keep the plot going. He hasn't even really rescued Kate at the end; he simply takes over after the rescuing has been done. And whether or not he and Kate end up in a relationship is of absolutely no interest to the reader, as his lack of development precludes any emotional investment on the reader's behalf.
Weighing in at just over 200 pages, The Death of a Pope is a lean book, its shortness evidence of Read's economical use of the language. He chooses the best words and structures to convey his point, then moves on, like an athlete unwilling to waste energy. The plot is far-fetched, but not, as one of the characters points out, any more far-fetched than the 9/11 plot. On the whole, the story is well told, yet I found the book too short and wished for two things that would have beefed it up: 1) that David had been developed more; 2) and that the plot had been evident sooner. The reader doesn't become aware of the plot until over half way through the novel. Everything up to that point has been character development and setting the stage for what will eventually be the plot. One of the jacket endorsements favorably compares the book to a le Carré novel, but whereas this novel doesn't contain le Carré's cynical world view, neither does it have that author's polished development. Which is a shame, because as a theological thriller this book is so much better than anything Dan Brown or Jerry Jenkins/Tim LaHaye have produced. I just wish there had been more of it.
A few final points in conclusion. First, I was unable to find this book at any Borders or Barnes and Noble in three different states, not even at the Barnes and Noble in the Mall of America. (It is, I think, a commentary on our cultural values that one of the largest shopping centers in the world has umpteen clothing stores but only one bookstore.) Ignatius Press is a major Christian publishing house whose books are carried by Borders and Barnes and Noble, and both dealers also stock rows and rows of the kind of Christian fiction I discussed earlier in this review, so I hesitate to think there's a christophobic conspiracy. In fact, the only store I found that stocked this novel was the bookstore in our diocesan Center for Ministry. This makes me wonder if perhaps the title was a bad choice and that maybe people think it's a high-brow, academic monograph dealing with the last days of John Paul II. Second, I don't like the fact that the book starts out by having a jury acquit Uriarte of a terrorist charge. Juries do get things wrong, of course. But Chesterton says of juries: "Our civilization has decided...that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men." Guilt and innocence is too important to be left up to the specialists. As crucial elements of democracies, juries are too important to be wrong simply as a literary plot device. As with the fate of Father Luke, I think this sends the wrong message, considering what Read is trying to accomplish. Finally, I am confused about the choice of narrative tense. Most stories are told in the past tense. This would seem especially apropos for a novel grounded in the historical past--recent past, but past nevertheless. Why tell it as if it were happening now? Besides, narrating the action in the present tense leads to problems when relating events that happened prior to the action of the story. The present perfect and the past perfect are both used but not, it seems to me, always consistently or even correctly. These are minor points that keep the novel from being a great novel, but they probably won't bother most readers or keep them from thinking it's a good novel.

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Summary of The Death of a Pope

Juan Uriarte, a handsome and outspoken Spanish ex-priest, seems to be the model of nonviolence and compassion for the poor and downtrodden. So why is he on trial, accused of terrorist activities? His worldwide Catholic charitable outreach program is suspected of being a front for radicals. The trial is covered by Kate Ramsay, a young British reporter, who sets out to uncover the truth about Uriarte and his work. She travels with him to Africa to see his work first hand but soon finds herself attracted to him.

Meanwhile an international conspiracy is growing, one that reaches into the Vatican itself. When the death of Pope John Paul II brings about the conclave that will elect Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, a terrorist plot involving blackmail, subterfuge, and mass murder begins to fall into place... a plot that could spell disaster for the Catholic Church and the world.

Piers Paul Read's powerful tale combines vivid characters, high drama, love, betrayal, faith, and redemption in a story of intrigue, church espionage, and an attempt to destroy the longest continuous government in the world the Papacy. The Death of a Pope races toward an unexpected and unforgettable conclusion.

Praise for The Death of a Pope

''Piers Paul Read has managed to combine sheer storytelling power with great learning and insight about the inner workings of the Church to fashion an entertainment of the highest order. If John le Carre took on Vatican politics, his book of suspense might aspire to be much like this one.''
Ron Hansen, Author of Mariette in Ecstasy and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

''The Death of a Pope is a faith-driven theological thriller, narrated by a storyteller of the first order as refreshing as it is rare among the bedraggled ranks of contemporary novelists.''
Joseph Pearce, Author of The Quest for Shakespeare

''In The Death of a Pope, the versatile Piers Paul Read, who has distinguished himself in many genres, returns to what can be called the ecclesiastical thriller. If the mystery looks to the past to explain a crime already committed, the thriller aims to prevent something from happening. When that something is a terrorist act, planned for the Vatican, drama is assured... To say more would rob the reader of his pleasure. The Death of a Pope is a great Read in every sense of the term.''
Ralph McInerny, Author of the Father Dowling Mysteries

About the Author
Novelist and playwright Piers Paul Read was born in Beaconsfield, England on March 7, 1941. He was educated by Benedictine Monks at Ampleforth College, York and also at St. John's College, Cambridge. His non-fiction includes Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, an account of the aftermath of a plane crash in the Andes which has sold five million copies worldwide and was later adapted as the film Alive; The Templars, a history of the Crusades; and Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography, a profile of the acclaimed late actor.
His first novel was published in 1966. More recent novels include On the Third Day, A Patriot in Berlin, and Alice in Exile.
Piers Paul Read is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of the Council of the Society of Authors. He has also written a number of television plays, and several of his novels have been adapted for film and television. He lives in London.

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