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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer


When Cain murders his brother Abel in the Bible, it becomes histories first homicide. When Mitchell Siegel was murdered in 1932, his grieving teenaged son, Jerry conceived of the world’s first bulletproof superhero. Jerry Siegel and his friend Joe Schuster had created Superman. What do these crimes; committed centuries apart have in common?

The answer to that is complicated, involving a secret society, good hearted homeless outreach worker who is also a disgraced federal agent, a renegade cop, a relentless federal agent, convicted felon, disgraced minister, and comic books. If I had just read that sentence, I’d be thinking, “that sounds too far fetched to be imaginable”. And yet, Brad Meltzer has done just that. Meltzer manages to take the fascinating story of the beginnings of Superman, add mystery, murder and intrigue to form the perfect suspense thriller. Not satisfied with that though, then the author mixes in family, friendship, deceit, love and our own quests for immortality.

I found the end of this book to be absolutely perfect. It is all summed up with three little words, and these words give a power to the story, they make us stop and realize exactly what it takes for us all to be remembered. (I can’t tell you the words…I’d ruin the ending.)

Brad Meltzer is a good author, and he’s done a great thing in this book. I highly recommend it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh! I'm going to send you an e-mail about how you can participate in a conference call with him on September 18.

Jena said...

Though I'm not normally interested in this kind of book, I may keep my eyes open for this one. What an enthusiastic review!

Holly said...

I spotted this one somewhere else, though I can't remember where, it thought it sounded good. Thanks for the review. Another one to add to the TBR list, which is growing a mile long....

I see you're reading Sweetheart right now. I'll be curious to hear what you thought of it.