The Magdalene Deception by Gary McAvoy

One of the greatest pleasures of my life was a trip to Rome with a dear friend in October 2012. (Remember being able to travel to different countries? Oh the joy! How we all miss right now what we used to take for granted!) My travelling companion and I managed to take a free tour of the Vatican while we were there. It was breath-taking, awe-inspiring, and full of tourists like ourselves. The Sistine Chapel has to be seen with human eyes to be fully appreciated. And of course, being an Irishman, Catholicism will be forever ingrained in my ethos despite it being a bad smell I’d like to get rid of. But still — the Vatican: just wow!

The Magdalene Deception is the first in a series of books called The Magdalene Chronicles, and it is written by Gary McAvoy, a military veteran, a tech entrepreneur, and a dealer in rare manuscripts, with all of these hats vying for attention in his debut fiction novel. And for the most part, he juggles these balls successfully.

Michael Dominic is a Jesuit priest: young, brash, handsome, and loyal to his father figure, the Brazilian cardinal Enrico Petrini. His calling to the Church is more out of a sense of said loyalty than spiritual devotion, but it does provide him with an outlet for his other passion. Father Dominic is a medievalist, and he has secured a great position within the Vatican, working as an archivist in its massive library, He could spend all the years of his life poring over the literally millions of documents from centuries past and he would still not see them all. But chance gives him his first encounter with the many secrets the Vatican hides and indeed controls.

Many of us will be familiar with Dan Brown’s megasellers The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons. If you’ve not read the books, it’s probable you’ve seen the movies adapted from them. They’re potboilers and not meant to be taken seriously despite them fueling a ton of conspiracy theories over the last couple of decades. They’re fun reads, and that’s that. The Magdalene Deception trods a similar path, in that there is alleged evidenciary proof of a document that threatens to turn the Catholic Church and its followers into a tailspin of denial shock. The Jesuit priest stumbles on this document by accident and this sets off a chain of events that force the novel’s main antagonist, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Dante, to use whatever means possible to suppress the investigation.

Running alongside the main plot is yet another investigation, this time concerning Hana Sinclair, a journalist who’s looking into the connection between Nazi plundered gold and a shadow group who help return this fortune to those it was taken from. Her contacts include the president of France, her grandfather, and Father Dominic’s mentor, Cardinal Petrini. The role of wartime pope, Pius XII, is examined and criticised for his alleged inactions during the Nazi occupation of Europe and the subsequent Holocaust. The involvement of the Croatian far-right militia, the Ustasha, echoes into the novel’s plot, too, and the powers-that-be in the Vatican have their hands dirty with them. There is a lot going in here.

Father Dominic and Hana join forces when it becomes plain to both that their individual investigations have a common purpose. While I always enjoy conspiracy theories in fictional form, I was drawn to Hana’s plotline more. It led me down a rabbit hole of espionage and subterfuge that fascinated me. I liked how Gary McAvoy worked historical figures into a fictional novel. I love when writers do this.

McAvoy also impressed me with his historical research. The novel is peppered with facts and figures, and it is all the better for it. What is lacks, however, is a sense of danger for the main characters. Yes, the matters at hand are urgent and so much is at stake, but I never anxious for the priest and the journalist., regardless of the danger they put themselves in. I was more worried for the supporting characters, especially Hana’s cousin, Karl the Swiss Guard, and Cardinal Petrini. (Note: Swiss Guards are well-trained bad-asses–every state should have their own, not just the Vatican City.) But there is genuine intrigue. I did want to know what was going to happen to the document at the end, and I was reasonably satisfied with the novel’s denouement. This is a plus for me, because I want to read the next book, The Magdalene Reliquary. I want to see what McAvoy comes up with next. Both books are available for those with a Kindle Unlimited account, and you’ll read them and be entertained and educated for a few days. You can’t ask better than that.