In Tongues of the Dead is a suspense/mystery in the vein of The Da Vinci Code. There is a religious mystery that the Catholic church wants to cover up. Granted, in this book, the mystery is a little more obscure. Most people have never heard of the Voynich manuscript. I hadn’t, anyway. Apparently, such a thing does exist. It is written in a language no one has been able to decipher.
In the book, the manuscript is on display at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, where there is a Catholic priest posing as a museum curator whose job is to watch over it, to let them know if someone ever seems to be able to read it. When an autistic child who never speaks reads the manuscript, a corrupt cardinal (well, maybe corrupt is too harsh, just misled. Or crazy.) sends Benicio Valero to ascertain if the boy is The One. Then he sends his hit men to get the boy. Nobody counts on the angels who also want to do him in, in order to get back in the good graces of God.
In several places, the plot is helped along by vivid, bizarre dreams. In other places people do really unnatural things. Like when Jake goes to the library to look up stuff about the Voynich manuscript while his son is in the hospital prepping for brain surgery.
SPOILER ALERT!
Here’s my big question: at the end, the boy with the brain surgery can read the manuscript, so I assume the autistic boy inhabited his body like the other angels inhabited bodies. But, the rules seem different now. When the angels inhabited bodies, they kicked out the original personalities that owned those bodies. In this case, the boy is still himself, he hasn’t become the autistic Matthew. Why did the rules change? I don’t understand!!!
Anyway, if you like a page turning suspense-mystery, especially ones involving supernatural beings and events, you ought to give this one a shot.