Kingdom Come

January 8, 2001
In rural North Carolina, two sleepy hamlets have been taken over suddenly by a large, extremely organized community known as Kingdom Come. Certain that they have a cult of unprecedented proportions on their hands, FBI agents attempt to infiltrate it, find its arms cache and bring its leaders to justice. While this setup seems to promise a tense thriller, the novel instead devolves quickly into a paranoid depiction of an America in which the government and media target God-fearing Christians as public enemy number one. Although peppered with suspenseful scenes and blessed with one strong, well-developed female character, the narrative is ultimately dogged by implausibility and poor pacing. Burkett (famous for his personal finance books for Christians) and Bunn (an award-winning Christian novelist) reveal the truth about the community far too early. This at least should give them time to explain the cultish menace they describe in the first pages, but they provide only a partial accounting. The rest of the plot follows a battle between vindictive, ugly, one-dimensional villains (a few of whom do experience redemption, but it is too glibly telegraphed) and protagonists who remain unaccountable for their behavior save that they are simply obeying God's directives. The dialogue between the heroes at the end indicates that Burkett and Bunn plan to write a sequel. One hopes that it will be longer on intrigue and shorter on spiritual thriller clich s.

November 1, 2000
What is the difference between joining a cult and following a true calling to God? FBI agent Ben Atkins thinks he knows after 20 years of investigating cult activity, and Rev. Charles Griffin's sudden establishment of a community called Kingdom Come in North Carolina has set off all the warning bells. Despite pressure from an ambitious superior to make a case against Kingdom Come, however, Atkins can find absolutely nothing on the 6000 families who have bought out the town and surrounded it with regulation prison fencing. He does find more and more proof that the community is what it seems: a branch of the Reformed Church of America that has split with the stagnant mother church to follow a call from the Lord. This intense, thought-provoking thriller from two powerhouses of the genre, Burkett (The Coming Economic Earthquake) and Bunn (The Meeting Place), winner of the newly established Christy awards recognizing excellence in various subgenres of Christian fiction, will have broad appeal for religious and secular audiences who read Frank Peretti's The Visitation (Thomas Nelson, 1999) and want a stronger suspense novel. For all collections.