BLASPHEMY

Isabella is not a character in this book, but is a 40 billion dollar supercollider particle accelerator. America hopes to find new sources of energy from this project, but is this what project leader Gregory Hazelius has in mind? Douglas Preston writes a exciting book with the action going back and forth between Washington D.C. and the Red Mesa area of a Navajo Reservation in the Arizona mountains.

Presidential Science Advisor Stanton Lockwood hires ex-CIA agent Wyman Ford to find out what's delaying the research. You might remember Ford from previous novels. He goes to Arizona, undercover as a Navajo liaison, and runs into plenty of trouble with the Navajos and the insane Pastor Eddy followers. Washington D.C. lobbyist Booker Crawley, in a attempt to bilk money out of the Navajo nation, inspires the disgraced televangelist Don T. Spates to incite the Christian world. Spates tells the world that the goal of the project is to prove The Big Bang Theory is real and the Bible is not.

Meanwhile in Arizona, the researchers are having continuing program malfunctions. Can this be a glitch or is GOD trying to talk to them? Is GOD guiding mankind to a new religion? You will have to read all 414 pages to find out the explosive ending! This is a book that you will not be able to put down. Kudos to Douglas Preston for a fresh idea marrying religion and science. The theory that a supercollider particle accelerator can suck Earth into a minature black hole has always intrigued me. We will find out since The Cernier Company, a physics research firm, is currently building the world's largest supercollider just outside of Geneva, Switzerland.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I was starting to sour on Douglas Preston till I read this novel and The Monster of Florence recently. If you like this book, also read the agent Pendergast novels written with Lincoln Child.