Liparulo, Robert: Comes a Horseman

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The prelude to Robert Liparulo's Comes a Horseman is riveting: an assassin lies silently in the ventilation shaft of an embassy in Tel Aviv, waiting for his mark to enter the room below. An ingeniously choreographed execution and escape follow, but the significance of the murder isn't apparent until much later in the story. By that time the killer, Luco Scaramuzzi, will have become responsible for many more--and more terrible--deaths.

Some five years later FBI agents Brady Moore and Alicia Wagner are called in to investigate a string of murders. The victims have nothing apparent in common other than the manner of their death: each was mauled by wolf-dog hybrids prior to being decapitated with an axe. In one scene that is a powerful argument for women not living alone in remote locations we watch the murderer, a bear of a man decked out in animal skins, slaughter his fifth victim.  His brutish lethality becomes even more alarming when this modern-day Norseman begins stalking Brady and his nine-year-old son. When Alicia finds herself almost simultaneously the target of another assassin, the two agents set off on their own--no longer willing to trust the FBI--to find out who is behind the attempts on their lives. Their pursuit plays out on an international stage, from the United States to Rome to Jerusalem.

Liparulo's novel is told from a number of perspectives--Luco Scaramuzzi's, the Norseman's, the victims', etc.--but it is primarily Brady and Alicia's story. He's a father and widower still grieving for his wife; she's unattached and hard-as-nails--married to her job, as we are told in one of the book's two (by my count) hackneyed expressions. (The other involves a rumpled suit jacket.) The book's plot is complex, the story at times keep-the-lights-on-scary. My one substantial complaint is that some two-thirds of the way in, after the reader has been frightened under the blankets more than once, the book's pace slows considerably for a large chunk of text, a roughly 70-page section in which Brady and Alicia absorb information from a wise advisor type they run across at the Vatican. The intel they receive is crucial, but it's unfortunate that its delivery is allowed to bring the story to a halt.

Liparulo's book, however, is well worth the read. Involving as it does the Catholic Church and an ancient religious conspiracy, reviewers will almost certainly liken it to The DaVinci Code. Dan Brown fans take note: you'll like this one.