Genesis Secret (Knox) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Knox's well-paced debut offers some new wrinkles on the theme of the archeological discovery that will change the course of human history. British reporter Rob Luttrell, who barely survived a suicide bomber's attack in Iraq, is hoping to take things easy, but his new assignment, to cover a dig in Turkish Kurdistan, proves anything but routine. German archeologist Franz Breitner has found evidence of buildings at the site known as Gobekli Tepe that appear to be 10,000 to 11,000 years old, 5,000 years earlier than any similar structure. The excavation has aroused the ire of the locals, who place an ancient Aramaic curse on those working there. It may be no accident when Breitner is impaled on a pole. Luttrell teams with an attractive biological anthropologist, Christine Meyer, to solve the mystery of the site, which may be where the Garden of Eden was located. Readers will hope to see more such offbeat thrillers from Knox, the pseudonym of London journalist Sean Thomas.
Publishers Weekly


Readers who enjoy the suspense novels of Raymond Khoury and Julia Navarro may think this is one stamped from that die; they will probably be disappointed. Knox (the pseudonym of British author Sean Thomas) introduces us to war reporter Rob Luttrell, a bit shell-shocked from his eyewitness coverage of suicide bombings in Baghdad. To help him recover, his editor sends Rob to write a relaxing National Geographic-like spread on an archaeological dig in Kurdistan. How much trouble can Rob get into? Plenty! He stumbles upon practitioners of an ancient quasi-demonic religion protecting the site and a wealthy, insane British schoolboy whose family legacy charges him with the protection of certain buried "secrets." This lunatic and his cadre wreak havoc in England and abroad, perpetrating heinous, grisly, and rather literary murders that scream horror, not suspense/thriller. The body count is high, and characters to whom we warmed are brutalized. Religion, too, is debunked. The titular "secret" is overplayed all the way to the tidy, happy ending. Recommended for large popular fiction collections with generous budgets.
Laura A.B. Cifelli -Library Journal