David Martinez, an American of Anglo-Hispanic parentage, is a lawyer with a dead-end job in London, working for a disgruntled boss who doesn’t give a rat’s ass when David is urgently summoned to Phoenix, Arizona, to be with his dying grandfather, his only living relative in the world. His grandfather entrusts him with a map of southern
David Martinez, an American of Anglo-Hispanic parentage, is a lawyer with a dead-end job in London, working for a disgruntled boss who doesn’t give a rat’s ass when David is urgently summoned to Phoenix, Arizona, to be with his dying grandfather, his only living relative in the world. His grandfather entrusts him with a map of southern France and northern Spain with markings and instructs him to visit the churches marked on the map and meet Jose Garovillo. Add to this, David’s somewhat modest circumstances see a windfall when he discovers that his dead grandfather, who always seemed to be on the poorer side of things, has left him an inheritance of $2 million. There’s nothing more for David to do but to set out. In London, meanwhile, journalist Simon Quinn is told of a gruesome torture-murder by his police source of a reclusive old woman and sets out on a trail which eventually converges with David as he digs deeper. And so sets off this whirlwind thriller which spans two continents and leaves a trail of bloody murders and broken bones. The mystery at the heart of the rollercoaster itself leads through a maze of theories, interpretations and studies. The doctrine of the Serpent Seed, which says that Satan, in the form of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, had intercourse with Eve and that Cain was the progeny of this union. Add to that a measure of eugenics, a branch of applied science which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population. And to top it all, the Nazi Holocaust and the purported reason behind it. Was there a deeper reason for the genocide Author Sean Thomas, writing under the pseudonym Tom Knox, has spun a fast-paced action-packed tale of an elusive mystery at the heart of this thriller, running an obstacle course with the protagonists — the young couple, David and Amy, on one end and the journalist, Simon Quinn, with a voracious appetite for the uncanny on the other. Our heroes and heroine have to be several steps ahead of the terrorist Miguel, the Wolf, of the Basque group ETA, who is on their trail to hunt them down. Those several steps seem inadequately short as they’re caught more than once. The terrorist on his own would not have been so difficult to deal with, but the Basque seems to have the support of a secret body endorsed by the Vatican, the Society of Pius X. The book reminds you of Dan Brown and his thrillers, with explosive action and the frenzy to get to the end of the tunnel where things are eventually revealed and secrets unearthed. But where Brown takes the most popular of ideas and seems to turn them on their head, which, perhaps, makes them seem more plausible, like the bloodline of Jesus in The Da Vinci Code, the idea Knox picks up is too phenomenal to contemplate and runs the risk of being trashed as a load of hogwash. Where Brown relies on seemingly solid reasoning and logical explanation behind the “facts” he puts before his readers, Knox can be vague and seems to be trying to put too much into it. There are so many threads that you have to keep going back and forth to keep track of them. The various threads are not tied together skilfully enough and the reader feels like a juggler trying to keep all strains of the story in mind against the backdrop of the successive revelations, but not forget the primary purpose of what the protagonist set out to do. The narrative matches the tempo of the action. Long, descriptive sentences when the pace is that of a relaxed conversation which changes to staccato to spur the reader’s attention when the situation becomes urgent. Knox’s attention to detail when he describes the grisly torture-cum-murder scenes is disconcerting as it seems completely irrelevant to the story and would hardly serve as bestseller ingredient to a book which has other things to recommend itself. But it can be forgiven as necessary evil in a pot-boiler of rapid action. Plausible or not, and at times bizarre and jaw-dropping, The Marks of Cain is certainly worth a read.
