Sign of the Cross

This derivative series launch from Cooper (Near Death) features yet another two-fisted academic on the trail of a religious relic with the power to change history. Cal Donovan, a Harvard Divinity School professor of religious history and archeology who’s known in the boxing ring as “The Reaper,” is approached by his Boston friend Cardinal Da Silva with a request from the pope. The pontiff, impressed with Cal’s book Holy Wounds: A History of Stigmata from the Middle Ages to the Present, wants Cal to investigate a current claim that a young Italian priest, Giovanni Berardino, has such wounds on his wrists. Cal travels to Italy, where he examines the priest, who doesn’t appear to be a fraud. Meanwhile, Lambret Schneider, the leader of a neo-Nazi group whose members call themselves the Knights of Longinus, has designs on the Holy Lance, the weapon used by a Roman centurion to stab Jesus, as well as on Berardino. Even Dan Brown devotees are likely to consider this old hat. (May)