The Holy Bullet by Luís M. Rocha

The Holy Bullet by Luís M. Rocha
416 p, Putnam, ISBN: 978-0-399-15600-7

This book is a thriller centered on a journalist who discovers that the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II (by Mehmet Ali Agca) was actually part of an elaborate conspiracy, not a lone gunman scenario.

What makes this doubly fascinating is that Rocha bases the thriller on actual information he got in 2005 from a man who claims to have killed Pope John Paul I, and that elements of the conspiracy are real. I don’t know if you caught the first one, but it’s a sequel to the international bestseller, The Last Pope, and it ties the murder of John Paul I with John Paul II.

Synopsis:

May 1981, Vatican City: As twenty-thousand euphoric believers piled into St. Peter’s Square to await Pope John Paul II’s weekly general audience, a young man of twenty-three, his hands hidden in his jacket pockets despite the warm day, settled among the pilgrims near the barricades where the Pope would soon pass by. As the slow-moving jeep carrying the Bishop of Rome drew even with where he was standing, Mehmet Ali Ağca pulled a gun from his pocket and fired six times at point blank range before he was stopped by the people around him, and arrested by security forces. Although grievously wounded John Paul II survived the attack. (He would later ascribe his survival to miraculous intervention—a divine hand guiding the bullet so as to miss every major organ and artery.) Over the years the attack on the Pope has been the subject of intense speculation. Some believe it was the work of a crazed lone gunman. Others are convinced it was a conspiracy involving one or more foreign powers and their intelligence services. No one has even come close to explaining what really happened, why the Pope was targeted, or who was responsible. Until now.

Already an international bestseller, Luis M. Rocha’s THE HOLY BULLET (Putnam; August 20, 2009; $25.95), a stunning sequel to his 2008 sleeper hit The Last Pope, is a fast-paced historical thriller about the conspiracy surrounding the attempted assassination of John Paul II. Although a work of fiction, the story is based in part on information Rocha says he received in 2005 from a man who claimed to have killed John Paul II’s predecessor, and then backed up his claim with documentary proof. With unusual twists and turns right up until the end, the story alternates between past and present, fact and fiction, as it returns readers to the same captivating world of money, violence and Vatican conspiracies they encountered last year in Rocha’s critically acclaimed debut. Now international journalist Sarah Monteiro, the rogue priest Rafael Santini, the mysterious assassin JC, and a host of new and returning characters including a Muslim with visions of the Virgin Mary, and members of the world’s most powerful—and secretive—organizations, come together in another gripping thriller.

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