The “Day of Confession” is by Alan Folsom.
I came across this book, when I was shopping for novels in a thrift store (yeah, they sell for 50 cents!) Well, I never heard of Alan Folsom, but the summary looked very good, so, I thought to myself – why not? I do like to try out new authors at times.
The book started off pretty good. It was interesting and heart-pounding, seat-boiler, page-turner – call it anything and everything. The pages kept on turning; the plot kept on thickening, and it became more and interesting as it went along.
The novel revolves around the Vatican, Catholic Church, Rome, Cardinal, assassin, Pope, Chinese diplomats, water poisoning in China, Italy and of course, Hollywood – a prefert Boiling Pot of thrillers!
Anyway, the difficult thing for me was to keep up with the character names – Ispettore Capo, Bardoni, Cardinal Marsciano, Gruppo Cardinale, Cardinal Parma, Elena Voso, Chen Yin, Yan Yeh, Eros Barbu, Renato etc. etc.
The other part, which threw me off was the pace of the novel – it had a very easy pace with exciting bumps, but the picked up in last few chapters. It was almost like watching (or “reading”) a Hollywood movie. I was almost tempted to skip the chapters.
Anyway, this novel is good, but I was expecting more – something, which would have kept me thinking even when I had closed the book. Alan Folsom doesn’t disappoint with this novel, am sure to get more books written by him.
