The Mona Lisa Sacrifice features a lost soul protagonist who inhabits the body Christ left behind when he ascended to heaven
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The Mona Lisa Sacrifice
Peter Darbyshire | Wolsak and Wynn Publishers
$24 | 27pp.
Karl Marx once claimed that history occurs first as tragedy and then as farce. Had he been more prescient (analysis being his strong suit and prediction not so much) he might have added that the past and its mythologies can also return as pulp fiction.
One example of this process is the ongoing public appetite for thrillers that blend history, conspiracy theories, myth, and surreal imaginings. Umberto Ecco, with books like Foucault’s Pendulum is the high culture manifestation of this phenomenon, while Christopher Moore, with books like Lamb and The Stupidest Angel, reworks this mash up of cultural elements into hilarious comedy. Dan Brown, with books like The DaVinci Code, may be the most commercially successful practitioner of this hybrid genre. Another highly popular practitioner, albeit one with more claim to literary excellence, is Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods , Norse Mythology and The Graveyard Book, to mention only a few of his multitudinous creations, who has a huge and devoted fan base.
Peter Darbyshire, a B.C. journalist and award-winning author, has been mining this popular vein of themes and characters for years now. In October he will be reissuing The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, first published in 2013. It was the first book in the Cross series, features a lost soul protagonist who inhabits the body Christ left behind when he ascended to heaven, and goes on to become an immortal, hard drinking, wisecracking angel hunter. This conceit is worked out with lots of action and tough-guy repartee and seems designed to invite the kind of lucrative movie adaptation given to Brown’s big Mona Lisa tome. Reissues of the next books in the series, The Dead Hamlets and The Apocalypse Ark are planned for later this fall.
While The Mona Lisa Sacrifice does not boast the high concept literary ambition of Ecco and Gaiman, nor is it as reliably funny as the Moore oeuvre, it is a pleasurable, fast-moving romp through history and myth, conspiracy, and confusion, and it is likely to find a large and enthusiastic audience. Where else can you find an immortal, hard-boiled noir character who wise cracks his way through death and resurrection, raises Diana, Princess of Wales, from the dead , duels with angels and fairies and pursues Judas across the centuries? Add this one to your list of books to read on the beach or on an airplane. You won’t be disappointed.
Highly recommended.