Day of Confession

September 7, 1998
A world-famous assassin, a power-hungry villain, a beleaguered hero, a plot to take over the largest country on earth. Folsom's frantically paced follow-up to his bestselling The Day After Tomorrow throws together all the raw materials of a first-rate thriller and proves that ingredients alone do not a meal make. Four days after Cardinal Rosario Parma is assassinated in Rome, hotshot L.A. entertainment lawyer Harry Addison gets a frantic phone message from his estranged brother, Danny, a Vatican priest. Shortly thereafter, Harry hears that Danny has died in a bus explosion. When he flies to Rome to claim the body, he discovers that Danny is the prime suspect in Parma's murder--and that he's still alive. The novel then follows two parallel plots. Harry tries to find Danny and clear his name; meanwhile, the sinister Cardinal Umberto Palestrina, who thinks he's the reincarnation of Alexander the Great, plots to make China the site of a new Holy Roman Empire. It's that Alexander the Great touch that pushes an already teetering story line over the edge, where everything is explained by shorthand (the estrangement between the Addison brothers) or circular logic (Palestrina is feared and powerful because he inspires fear and wields power). There's a lot of action, mostly to hide the fact that the cardboard characters generate as little sympathy as the thousands of Chinese deaths that are Step One in Palestrina's master plan. Instead of being disturbing or controversial, Folsom's mix of religion and politics approaches comic-book parody. Agent, Aaron Priest.

May 15, 1998
A dead priest accused of murder himself is the key to a secret Vatican scheme to build a new Holy Roman Empire--in China. From the author of The Day After Tomorrow (LJ 3/15/94), which received a record-breaking advance--and good reviews.

July 1, 1998
Folsom kicks off this superviolent tale of Vatican intrigue with the assassination of a cardinal, followed immediately by a bus bombing that apparently kills the apparent assassin, Father Daniel Addison. It is an explosive start to a mystery with "blockbuster" written all over it. The mayhem temporarily subsides as the Italian police try to get a handle on what happened. They initially grill American Harry Addison, who has come to Rome to collect his brother's body for burial in America. Then one of the policemen is murdered while in Harry's company, and Harry becomes a fugitive from the crime scene. On the run, he ponders his discovery that the mangled body he viewed in the casket was not his brother's; shifting points of view reveal that other interested parties are disturbed by this proof that Father Addison survived the bombing. Finding the padre thus drives the whole novel. Those who want to finish what they started have at their command a stealthy, ruthless robo-assassin and a motive in their knowledge (obtained by violating the confessional) of Father Addison's awareness of an unethical program for the Catholic Church's conversion of China. Harry's search, aided by subsidiary characters (a CIA agent, a TV reporter, a denizen of Rome's sewers), brings his brother and the assassin into close proximity, lethally close in the climactic showdown within the very walls of the Holy See. Extravagantly theatrical entertainment, crammed with cliff-hanging escapes, a little sex, a little religion, a lot of violence--just the type of script Hollywood dies for, as will legions of readers looking for pure distraction. ((Reviewed July 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)