Grenelle, by Isabelle Holland
The opening page of Holland's thriller Grenelle is so bad in so many different ways that I feel compelled to quote the entire thing:
The scandal, a typhoon in a thimble, broke one windy autumn morning and caused, at the beginning, and before anyone connected it with that sad, unexplained death, far more raucous and ribald amusement than it did concern.
"Who the hell does he think would want the damn thing?" Father Spaeth roared at me, trying to control his cloak, which was whipping around his jeans like a sail in the fresh breeze blowing east across this part of Virginia from the Blue Ridge Mountains. "He must think he's back in the days when a lost relic would call out the armies of the Pope and the Emperor to wrest it away from the unbeliever. Christ!"
The father, who fancied himself as being, as he put it, a very Now priest, brought out the last word with emphasis, as though, I couldn't help thinking, he had laid a particularly challenging egg.
Susan Grenelle is the daughter of the dead dean of an undistinguished religious college recently shaken by an old priest's controversial claim to possess a splinter of the True Cross. It is an example of the clumsy craftsmanship of this book, so much less fun than Holland's Trelawny, Tower Abbey, or leprous Dracourt, that not only did I get through the entire book without knowing what Susan did for a living, but the origin of the cross fragment, earlier a huge source of mystery, was never revealed. I am also still not sure why the "sad, unexplained death" (the murder of a local boy) happened.
The Now Father Spaeth is spearheading Resist Relics (anti-splinter), against the more traditional pro-splinter faction. The splinter is stolen, then plastic imitations are hidden around the school. The dean's office is trashed. "Obscene, blasphemous" notes are sent (but sadly not quoted.) A group of drugged-out, criminal, Satanic and pagan hippies show up, drug Susan's niece Samantha's dog, kidnap Samantha, and lay her out for a ritual Satanic sacrifice in front of the real splinter.
There's also a romantic subplot about Susan and the former priest who jilted her in favor of her now-dead evil twin sister (now conveniently the local police chief-- the former fiancee, not the dead sister). In a desperate attempt to tie the way more interesting past family drama into the lame current cross shenanigans, the chief villain is revealed to be responsible for the deaths of Susan's father, sister, and sister's husband by hooking them all on drugs. He is also a psychotic Satanist.
Overall, this novel confirmed my theory that no book containing Satanists has ever been good.
Not one of Holland's better efforts.
The scandal, a typhoon in a thimble, broke one windy autumn morning and caused, at the beginning, and before anyone connected it with that sad, unexplained death, far more raucous and ribald amusement than it did concern.
"Who the hell does he think would want the damn thing?" Father Spaeth roared at me, trying to control his cloak, which was whipping around his jeans like a sail in the fresh breeze blowing east across this part of Virginia from the Blue Ridge Mountains. "He must think he's back in the days when a lost relic would call out the armies of the Pope and the Emperor to wrest it away from the unbeliever. Christ!"
The father, who fancied himself as being, as he put it, a very Now priest, brought out the last word with emphasis, as though, I couldn't help thinking, he had laid a particularly challenging egg.
Susan Grenelle is the daughter of the dead dean of an undistinguished religious college recently shaken by an old priest's controversial claim to possess a splinter of the True Cross. It is an example of the clumsy craftsmanship of this book, so much less fun than Holland's Trelawny, Tower Abbey, or leprous Dracourt, that not only did I get through the entire book without knowing what Susan did for a living, but the origin of the cross fragment, earlier a huge source of mystery, was never revealed. I am also still not sure why the "sad, unexplained death" (the murder of a local boy) happened.
The Now Father Spaeth is spearheading Resist Relics (anti-splinter), against the more traditional pro-splinter faction. The splinter is stolen, then plastic imitations are hidden around the school. The dean's office is trashed. "Obscene, blasphemous" notes are sent (but sadly not quoted.) A group of drugged-out, criminal, Satanic and pagan hippies show up, drug Susan's niece Samantha's dog, kidnap Samantha, and lay her out for a ritual Satanic sacrifice in front of the real splinter.
There's also a romantic subplot about Susan and the former priest who jilted her in favor of her now-dead evil twin sister (now conveniently the local police chief-- the former fiancee, not the dead sister). In a desperate attempt to tie the way more interesting past family drama into the lame current cross shenanigans, the chief villain is revealed to be responsible for the deaths of Susan's father, sister, and sister's husband by hooking them all on drugs. He is also a psychotic Satanist.
Overall, this novel confirmed my theory that no book containing Satanists has ever been good.
Not one of Holland's better efforts.