cover image The Black Madonna

The Black Madonna

Peter Millar. Arcadia (Dufour, dist.), $24.95 trade paperback (318p) ISBN 978-1-906413-68-2

About a third of the way into this cookie-cutter Dan Brown homage, Oxford academic Marcus Frey betrays his cluelessness: "All he knew was they were now in Germany, in a hire car heading for a place he had never heard of, for no other reason than it was home to an obscure religious relic." Frey is accompanied by his ex-lover, Nazreem Hashrawi, curator of Gaza's Museum of Palestine, who was sexually assaulted in the course of a burglary at the museum apparently aimed at obtaining Hashrawi's earth-shaking find: "the only depiction of the Virgin Mary created in her own lifetime." Hashrawi earlier traveled to England to enlist Frey's help, starting an all-too-familiar story line of violence and conspiracies. British journalist Millar, the author of two other thrillers, Stealing Thunder and Bleak Midwinter, fails to make a convincing case that his religious McGuffin has the potential to create turmoil. (June)