The Last Day

A millennial thriller that's as cranky as it is intense, Kleier's first novel grinds a sharp ax against organized religion, particularly Roman Catholicism, as it imagines the arising of a possible global messiah. Kleier narrates primarily through the viewpoint of a cable-TV reporter who witnesses many of the novel's bizarre events. On December 24, 1999, a meteor strikes a secret Israeli defense facility, freeing one of the site's experiments--Jeza, a beautiful woman who is an artificially gestated clone and whose unsurpassed intelligence may arise from computer chips implanted in her brain. Days later, Jeza performs a miracle in Bethlehem; shortly thereafter, she delivers her ""New Beatitudes"" (""Blessed are you who are tolerant, for you shall attain Unity"") to a worldwide TV audience. Within months, the world teeters on the brink of anarchy, torn between pro- and anti-Jeza forces. The latter are spearheaded by the Vatican, for Jeza's apocalyptic message includes the dismantling of all churches. If Kleier's prose, particularly his dialogue, lacks subtlety, his melodramatic story will have readers racing through the narrative with its many plot twists--political, scientific and theological. A warm and fuzzy conclusion can't mask the novel's bombast and bad taste, however. Kleier's portrayal of the Vatican as a venal cabal and of the pope as a bumbler, his swipes at Protestantism and Islam, his use of the Lubavitcher Rebbe to endorse Jeza's sacred status, his employment of the maybe-messiah as a mouthpiece for politically correct religion (feminist, pro-choice, anticlerical)--all make this work as much an offensive rant as an entertaining read. 500,000 first printing; film rights to Columbia/TriStar; Time Warner audio; foreign rights sold in the U.K., the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Portugal. (Nov.)