The Joshua Stone

September 2, 2013
Barney follows his Thriller Award–finalist debut, 2011’s The Genesis Key, with an engrossing standalone that combines biblical history and modern science. In 1959, while a group of scientists were conducting a secret experiment at an underground lab in Thurmond, W. Va., a serious accident occurred. President Eisenhower ordered the lab sealed and records of its existence expunged. In the present day, the NSA notices activity at the site and calls in assistant security auditor Mike Califano and CIA agent Ana Thorne to investigate. Meanwhile, renegade scientist Benjamin Fulcher, who knew these experiments were designed to unleash the power of the so-called Joshua Stone that enabled the biblical Joshua to perform amazing feats, teams with Russian energy czar Vladamir Krupnov to get there first. The race is on to recover the stone that’s buried beneath the old lab. Barney nicely integrates time-dilation theory into the fast-moving plot. Agent: Mickey Choate, Choate Agency.

October 1, 2013
Barney, whose 2011 debut The Genesis Key imagined a historical conspiracy involving the discovery of genes that control longevity, returns with a Bible-based thriller about ancient stones with the power to bend time. In 1959, a secret government experiment supervised by a prominent German scientist in an underground laboratory in West Virginia went terribly wrong. It was such a calamity, the Eisenhower administration did its best to erase any traces of it from history. When, in the present, a strange man with overgrown nails and hair, a heavy German accent and a stomach wound shows up in a town not far from where the feds set up shop, he quickly draws the attention of a waitress who is sure she has seen him before. The man, who calls himself Malachi, goes off in search of a certain church to which someone has directed him via esoteric clues. U.S. government agencies are quickly on his trail--as are cutthroat Russian industrialists in cahoots with a compromised Nobel Prize-winning British physicist. They're eager to cash in on what a government agent refers to as "the antigravity stuff that the Nazis were supposed to be working on at the end of the war." The Nazis were happy to find that pieces of stone, not divine intervention, caused the parting of the Red Sea and allowed the Israelites to escape Egypt--a case of science trumping religion. Barney commands a large cast of characters well enough, and he sells his premise with conviction. But the author is unable to turn the material into compelling reading. If, as one of the scientists in this book puts it, "Einstein himself was confounded by this material," the reader is merely underwhelmed.

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Starred review from October 1, 2013
Barney mixes the political thriller, technology gone awry, religion, and even some elements of science fiction in this page-turning adventure spectacle. Scientists working in a top-secret lab in 1959 have disappeared; what they found before the disappearance, we learn, has the potential to destroy the modern world. Government agents Mike Califano and Ana Thorne investigate, but what they discover seems utterly unbelievable. Then, in the small town where the scientists disappeared, an out-of-place man arrives in a diner with clothing and money from an earlier era. Could he be one of the missing scientists? Barney does a phenomenal job juggling all of the elements, creating a thriller unlike any other. Imagine a mix of Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and Dean Koontz, with a sprinkle of Brad Thorand maybe a touch of Stephen King's 11/22/63. The Joshua Stone is completely original and totally terrific. Readers will quickly be looking for Barney's previous novel, The Genesis Key (2011), and will likely become a fan of his writing for life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)