Last Cato Book

I have absolutely no interest in The Da Vinci Code or any books of that sort, but I picked this up for two reasons: my last name is Cato, and it was only $2 for a hardcover at the Phoenix VNSA sale. Personally relevant and cheap![return][return]I was pleasantly surprised by this massive book. Once it got going, I was completely snared. The main character, Ottavia, is a high-ranking nun working in the Vatican. She specializes in ancient manuscripts and research, and therefore she's stunned when her superiors need her expertise in a new assignment - identifying unusual tattoos on the corpse of a dead Ethiopian. To complicate things more, the dead man was carrying along bits of the True Cross - the one Jesus died upon - and bears scarification that suggests a long-lost religious order may not be lost after all. Along with a stoic Swiss Army captain and brilliant Coptic Egyptian, the three of them work through linguistic riddles and discover the key to everything is hidden in plain sight - Dante's The Divine Comedy. As other churches around the world reel from the theft of their fragments of the Cross, Ottavia and the others rush to join this hidden order so they can stop the pilfering and confront the enigmatic leader of the group, Cato.[return][return]Reading the book reminded me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This is an intelligent, well-researched book and it was a great deal of fun. The ending had a nice twist that was followed by a bit of a cliche, but that was fine. I was concerned that I'd go through all 458-pages and be disgusted by the ending, as I was recently with Edgar Sawtelle, but that wasn't the case here. It ended like it should. I have no regrets about this $2 purchase.